China arrests nearly 600 underground churchgoers

AFP , BEIJING

Officials in northeast China's Jilin Province have carried out a major crackdown on underground churches and detained nearly 600 worshippers and leaders, a US group said yesterday.

The campaign was carried out on May 22. About 100 heads of the illegal churches, including professors from the province's Changchun University, remain in custody, the China Aid Association (CAA) said.

China allows Christians to worship only in state-approved churches which come under strict government monitoring. Many, however, prefer to attend underground or "house" churches.

One of the leaders detained was Zhao Dianru, 58, who was praying in his home when a dozen police raided and searched his house, the CAA said in a statement.

He was held in custody at the Jiutai City detention center until June 6 when he was released, the CAA said.

Around the same time about 100 house churches in the Changchun area, the capital of Jilin Province, were raided and almost 600 house church worshippers and leaders were taken into custody, the CAA said.

Most were released after 24 to 48 hours of interrogation.

University students, professors and other young intellectuals make up most of the parishioners at the raided house churches, CAA cited sources as saying.

The religious rights group said it believes the raids were aimed at eliminating the influence of house churches in university areas.

The churches affected are independent house churches with thousands of believers who choose not to register with the government, CAA said.

"While the Chinese government has been claiming to the world community that Chinese people are enjoying religious freedom, this major assault on unregistered house churches in Jilin Province really shows the opposite," said CAA president Bob Fu.

Local police officials yesterday said they were not aware of the incident. Government officials could not be reached for comment.

Diplomat's asylum case `a priority'

NO `DITHERING': Australian officials said that the visa application of former Chinese official Chen Yonglin is being handled with urgency

AP , Sydney

The asylum application of a former Chinese diplomat who claims to be part of a 1,000-member spy network in Australia is being treated "as a matter of priority," Australia's immigration minister said yesterday.

Chen Yonglin, 37, left his post as a consul for political affairs at China's consulate in Sydney last month and approached immigration officials seeking political asylum in Australia.

His initial application was rejected and he is now in hiding with his wife and daughter as the government considers an alternate request for a temporary visa normally reserved for refugees fleeing persecution.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said Chen's temporary visa application was lodged on June 3 and was being processed "in a normal manner, but as a priority."

"Far from dithering over Mr. Chen's protection visa application, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs is processing the application as a matter of priority," Vanstone said in a statement.

spy network

Chen's case made headlines earlier this month when he emerged from hiding to tell a pro-democracy rally in Sydney that he had been a member of a 1,000-member spy network tasked with monitoring Chinese dissident groups in Australia, including Falun Gong members and Taiwanese independence activists.

In a statement read before a Sydney rally attended by about 100 people yesterday, Chen encouraged his fellow citizens to "free themselves [from] the spirit bondage and the party chains" of Chinese communism.

"Now it's the time to smash and break the chains holding your body and soul, and embrace a life of freedom as I did walking out of shadows into a new life, no matter how difficult it is," Chen reportedly said in the statement read by Sonya Bryskine, international editor of the Epoch Times, an English-language newspaper supported by the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

`shake off fear'

"Democracy and human rights are what we Chinese need urgently," the statement said. "Let us be brave and join hands together to shake off all the fear, terror and grief laid upon us by the ruling communist regime in China."

Chen has repeatedly told the media he fears for his safety if he is forced to return to Australia.

He told the Nine television network's 60 Minutes program on Sunday that he could face up to 10 years in prison or the death penalty for disclosing government secrets.

"Serious punishment will be waiting for me," he said on the program.

China's ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying , has denied Chen's spy claims and said he would be not be harmed if he returned to Beijing.

The case comes at a sensitive time for Australia-China relations, but both governments have said Chen's asylum bid will not affect their economic or political relationship.

China is Australia's third largest trading partner, with trade worth about A$29 billion (US$22 billion) a year.

The two countries have just begun negotiations over a multibillion-dollar free-trade deal, and Australia is also set to begin delivering liquid natural gas to Guangdong Province next year as part of a long-term A$25 billion supply contract -- Canberra's largest export deal.

Democracy in jeopardy

By Liang Hong-ming

Taiwan may be one of the few places in the free world where politicians regularly utter patently inconsistent positions and are not challenged by reporters.

This has allowed a steady blowback among reactionary forces, clustering around former benefactors and enablers to the Chiang family dictatorship. At its most dangerous, this lapdog mentality among journalists enables major opposition party leaders to travel to an avowed enemy nation and surrender Taiwan's sovereignty with impunity.

On another level, it also leads to repeated sensational cases of fabricated news -- the latest being the People First Party (PFP) councilor and his lies about funeral food resold into the market.

If the journalists at the mostly blue newspapers -- the United Daily News and the China Times -- or the mostly blue electronic media, behave as journalists with a memory, with rational minds and with logic, then the latest pan-blue outcry vis-a-vis fishing disputes with Japan would be an interesting test case.

Let's first separate the actual event and the politics of it. Taiwan has overlapping boundaries with the nations of Japan, China, the Philippines and, if you count the rocks in the South China Sea, Vietnam and Indonesia. No one is against the government standing firm, using force if necessary, to protect our people from foreign forces.

But lapdog journalism has allowed pan-blue politicians to practice the finest examples of self-contradictory politics. The same politicians in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the PFP that have blocked long-sought military equipment lest Taiwan be strong enough to resist forced unification through a Chinese invasion, are also the same politicians that then turn around and criticize the government for not acting strongly enough against Japan.

The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling. The easy pass by journalists must be envied by politicians the world over. If only life were so easy for us all.

But the hypocrisy of pan-blue politicians and journalists runs even deeper. There is this psychotic attachment by the far right (or is it far left? It's hard to tell nowadays in Taiwan) to the barren rocks they call Diaoyutai. Taipei's reactionary Mayor Ma Ying-jeou cut his teeth as a Diaoyutai activist after all. Diaoyutai symbolizes everything idiotic about nationalism which theorists have postulated -- it's psychological, imagined, symbolic and ultimately it means very little.

Again, let's be clear -- the waters overlapping with Japan we need to protect; the disposition of that rock, our relationship with Japan as a potential ally in a war against China, the negotiations for how to settle the fishing/border disputes -- that's complex, and many things have to be weighed up. But for the pan-blues, this is about Japan and World War II and all the rest of it.

Well fine, let's for the moment lean over backward and play lapdogs ourselves, and take the pan-blue politicians at face value. Let's assume that they do love our fishermen, they do care about the foreign menace and that they do want to protect Taiwan's borders.

Isn't it interesting then that during this same period, media reports have indicated that Chinese fishermen have routinely invaded the territorial waters of Taiwan around the Pratas (Dongsha) islands? That Chinese fishing vessels have routinely invaded Taiwanese waters around Kinmen and Matsu? Or, even worse, that Chinese intelligence-spy vessels have steadily prodded and pushed Taiwan proper?

Do you recall a single pan-blue politician calling for action? Do you recall a single reporter from the pan-blue media asking them why not? Do you recall a single editorial from the United Daily News calling for firm government responses to these invasions?

Has anyone from the pan-blue side, politicians or media, called for an increase in the defense budget?

Quite the contrary. When it comes to Chinese aggression, the pan-blue forces have locked Taiwan into a pathological box -- any firmness and confrontation, they reason, is too provocative, and any means allowing the country to stand firm (weapons, alliances) they will filibuster, sabotage.

The point is this: Unlike KMT Chairman Lien Chan and PFP Chairman James Soong, who famously kowtowed their way across China and stated that "Taiwan's independence is not an option," we should abide by the spirit of democracy and modernity. In an authentic democracy, all options should be on the table, the majority should rule and politicians should be forced by journalists to explain their positions, their internal logic, and their conflicts of interest. Then, the people, the true sovereign of any democracy, can weigh the pluses and minuses of the position.

In this sense, surrendering to the People's Republic of China, while pathetic and sad, is a legitimate option, just as formal independence is a legitimate position. And in a democracy, all positions should be stated clearly, tested robustly and they should all be heard.

But just as proponents of an immediate declaration of independence ought to be forced by a vigilant media to flesh out the scenario and explain why a possible war is worth it, shouldn't proponents of surrender and capitulation be forced to at least admit that that's their ultimate goal?

Instead, with a compliant lapdog media, the pan-blue parties can push the agenda of surrender with impunity and without clarity, and at the same time play chicken hawk via Japan.

Liang Hong-ming

Shaker Heights, Ohio