According to reports, China’s government is burning bibles, destroying crosses, shutting churches and ordering Christian followers to sign papers renouncing their faith, according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China.
The accounts have appeared amid an apparent, massive crackdown launched by Beijing against religion as a whole.
Besides Christianity, millions of Muslims in far-west China have been facing forced political indoctrination at alleged ‘brainwashing camps’ where they have to eat pork and drink alcohol as ‘punishment’, said human rights groups and former detainees.
Whereas, children in traditionally Buddhist Tibet have been banned from taking part in religious activities during the summer holidays.
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, religious believers are seeing their freedoms shrink dramatically even as the country undergoes a religious revival.
Experts and activists say that as he consolidates his power, Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.
Bob Fu of the U.S.-based group China Aid, who is also a pastor, said over the weekend that the closure of churches in central Henan province and a prominent house church in Beijing in recent weeks represents a ‘significant escalation’ of the crackdown.
‘The international community should be alarmed and outraged for this blatant violation of freedom of religion and belief,’ he wrote in an email.
Fu posted video footage of what appeared to be piles of burning bibles in Henan on his Twitter account. He also provided forms stating that the signatories had renounced their Christian faith.