Execution of house church leader delayed for appeal
1/16/2002LONDON (BP)--The 46-year-old founder of the "South China" house church movement, Gong Shengliang, has been granted a reprieve from a death sentence that was scheduled to be carried out Jan. 5, Gong's relatives have reported, according to a Compass Direct news service dispatch Jan. 7. High-level pressure on the Chinese government was exerted after news broke in early January that Shengliang had been given a death sentence in a Dec. 18 secret trial in Hubei province on charges of "complicity in rape" and "leading an evil cult," Compass Direct reported. Sources in Beijing confirmed that Gong had indeed not been put to death, the news service reported, but the official reason from the Chinese Foreign Ministry was that Gong had been granted a period of several months to appeal the death sentence. High-level sources are confident that Gong will have his death sentence commuted to imprisonment, especially as evidence has come to light that two women whose testimony was used to convict him of rape were forced to provide false versions of events, Compass Direct reported. The 50,000-member South China movement is one of many spinoffs from the larger Born Again house church movement, whose founder Xu Yongze recently served three years in jail. The evidence against Gong has not been made public, and some evangelical sources are skeptical that his movement is a cult or that the rape charges are well-founded, Compass Direct reported. The case highlights the question of defining a cult. The Chinese government has not given a formal definition, and its religious rules criminalize any Christian group that refuses to register with the government, making them vulnerable to the cult charge. The South China group has received such a label, and in the December trial, four other leaders were given death sentences that were suspended for two years. A total of 63 members of the movement have been jailed. "This group is in big trouble; the police are really gunning for them," a Beijing house church pastor told Compass Direct, "but I don't think they are particularly bad. They may be a bit eccentric in some doctrines, but there is nothing cultish about them." Sources in Beijing said that Gong's reprieve was due "in a significant measure" to the pressure exerted by U.S. government and congressional sources, as well as swift publicity by agencies such as Compass Direct and Freedom House. The year 2002 is expected to be a difficult year for those house churches that refuse to register with the government. According to Compass Direct, evidence suggests that the multi-million-member Born Again movement also has been singled out for harassment, show trials and multiple jailings of its leaders. Another serious case emerged Jan. 5 when a Hong Kong citizen and trader, Li Guangquiang, also was accused of "using an evil cult to damage a law-based society" [the same charge as Gong's] for smuggling 33,000 Bibles in April and May 2000 to the "Shouters" -- a house church movement prominent in some rural parts of China, Compass Direct noted. Li was issued the indictment by a court in China's Fujian province, where he is being held. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy warned that Li also might be handed a death sentence. The center speculated that no less than 16 Christian house church movements had been designated as "cults" by the government and could face the same kind of fierce crackdown that the folk-Buddhism movement Falun Gong has experienced during the past two years.
