The Beijing Winter Olympics have begun but more human rights advocates are continuing the fight against China's communist government, which has been found guilty of several offenses that warrant international attention. Religious persecution continues in China and religious freedom advocates are rallying for people to boycott the Olympics in response to the communist state's continued offenses.
In an article for the Christian Post, ChinaAid Founder Bob Fu reported that one Christian house church faced intense religious persecution in China so they were forced to flee to South Korea. However, the 60 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, which is also called "Mayflower church," are in danger of being repatriated because South Korea denied to grant them asylum.
The report said that Pastor Pan Yongguang and his congregation were often the subject of religious persecution in China dating back to 2014. At the time, Chinese authorities would interrogate him several times a week, during which he would be pushed to join the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-approved Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Pastor Pan resisted and refused to teach CCP-approved doctrine.
Chinese authorities then began to target the church with extra surveillance. The church-run elementary school was evicted, devastating parents in the church who yearned to educate their children with a Christian worldview.
"Our church would educate our children about our religious beliefs, and the police would come along and force them to enroll in school so they could be brainwashed," Pastor Pan recounted to Radio Free Asia. "They didn't want us to teach our children the Bible, and children are banned from attending church. This went against our faith and our consciences."
In 2019, the Mayflower church held a vote, in which the majority chose to leave China to start over somewhere else where they would have religious freedom. The group then headed to Jeju Island in South Korea, where they applied for asylum, but it was denied multiple times. Mayflower church members have also appealed to the highest court, which still rejected them. They have only 2 weeks to leave South Korea.
Pastor Pan said he has been charged by the communist authorities of China of "subversion of state power, colluding with anti-China foreign forces and human trafficking" for taking the group out of China. He remarked, "Just one of those charges would be enough to send me to jail for a very long time."
Pastor Pan's friend, Pastor Wang Yi, is also serving a nine-year prison sentence for "subversion of state power" for refusing to comply with the communist authorities demands. Now, the Mayflower church no longer feels safe in South Korea and is dreading repatriation in China, where many church members who remained have been arrested and threatened by Chinese State Security.
The Guardian said that "China should not have been given the honor of hosting this year's Winter Olympics." When it hosted the games in 2008, it failed to keep its promise to improve its human rights track record. The report said that the opposite has in fact happened, with "a concerted crackdown on human rights, a centralisation of political power and creeping and extensive surveillance," which even the Olympic athletes are now observing. Under President Xi Jinping, the authoritarianism in China has reached "sinister heights."
