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http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s04070010.htm

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net

Monday, July 5, 2004

CHINESE WOMAN BEATEN TO DEATH AFTER DISTRIBUTING BIBLES
Police brutality leads to public outcry, reports say

By: Stefan J. Bos
Special Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

BEIJING , CHINA (ANS) -- A 34 year old woman has been beaten to death by police after she was arrested for handing out Bibles in southwest China’s Guizhou province, ASSIST News Service learned Monday, July 5.

The French News Agency (AFP) quoted China's state run Legal Daily newspaper as saying that police in Guizhou’s Tongzi county arrested Jiang Zongxiu, a farmer, on June 18 on suspicion of “spreading rumors and inciting to disturb social order."

They had planned to detain her for 15 days, the report said, alleging Jiang died in police custody the afternoon she was arrested.

Her mother-in-law, Tan Dewei, who was arrested with Jiang but later released, told reporters police kicked Jiang repeatedly during interrogation, AFP reported. Police later informed Jiang’s family she had died of a sudden illness and turned over her body to the family, but relatives saw she was covered with bruises and blood stains, the report alleged.

SECOND TIME

It is at least the second published killing of a Christian by Chinese police in as many months, although human rights watchdogs believe torture of Christians and dissidents is wide spread in the Communist nation.

In a letter received by ASSIST News Service (ANS) last month, Gu Xiangyan said her brother Gu Xianggao, 28, who was falsely accused of murder, had been tortured to death in April after police raided his 500-thousand strong house church movement known as "Three Grades Servants" in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China.

Like Gu, Jiang was apparently healthy before the police detention began. AFP quoted Jiang's husband and other villagers in neighboring Chongqing municipality where Jiang lived as saying that she was in good health before the arrests "and was responsible for doing most of the family's farm work."

PUBLIC OUTCRY

Chinese police officials have refused to comment on the case. An operator manning the phones at the Guizhou police station said she was "not aware of the incident", AFP reported. The unprecedented report on the attack by state media is seen as a sign of public disgust with police tactics and China's continuing crackdown on religious practitioners.

In recent weeks more than 100 evangelical leaders are known to have been detained, and recently the Vatican expressed concern over the whereabouts of several bishops. Besides church leaders even Bible owners are targeted and several of them have reportedly been send to labor camps for "re-education."

Bibles are banned from book stores and are not easy to obtain, AFP reported from China. Human rights organizations say the Communist authorities have recently given a "secret directive" to police forces to crackdown on the rapidly growing underground churches, also known as the house church movement, which the government sees as a threat to the Communist ideology and Atheism.

Only observing religion in state churches is allowed. Despite the difficulties, China is experiencing the largest church growth in the world, analysts say.

Read more on these and other news stories on news agency BosNewsLife at website http://www.bosnewslife.com

Award winning Journalist Stefan J. Bos was born on the 19th of September 1967 in a small home in downtown Amsterdam, in the Netherlands not far from the typewriter of his father, who was (and still is) a Reporter and ghostwriter. Already at a very young age Bos decided to become journalist and finally arrived in Hungary, the same country where his parents had smuggled Bibles during Communism.

Bos has traveled extensively to cover wars and revolutions throughout the region and received the Annual Press Award of Merit from the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his coverage about foreign policy affairs including Hungary's relationship with NATO and the European Union. Stefan J. Bos can be reached at: bosnews@externet.hu.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.

"also known as the house church movement, which the government sees as a threat to the Communist ideology and Atheism"

This is the path to which PC leads. No matter how hard they try, they can't stop someone from feeling, thinking, or believing what they choose.

Both communism and atheism are unnatural conditions, enforced by those that would dominate with whatever force is necessary. If the government is willing to do this to the people of their own culture, what will they try to do to the rest of the world?

There's a lesson here. We need to look to our own politicians who espouse this same ideology. We need to look hard at their motivations, for the ultimate end of the path they have chosen is domination through brute force.

The CHINESE are every bit as scary as AQ IMHO.