THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

All-out effort by Beijing to hide
the regime's persecution of religion
China expends great energy to suppress religion,
and even more energy to hide the suppression.
Closing streets, monitoring media, bullying reporters...
by Jiang Tao

February 10, 2019


On January 30, 2019, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China released their annual report on the working conditions for foreign reporters living in China. The report showed that the journalism environment had worsened in 2018.
- Reporters stationed in China to gather news had been obstructed, followed, and forced to delete data.
- Their communication devices had been monitored and wiretapped, and the e-mail passwords of some had been hacked.
- Some reporters were even deported.
- Of the foreign reporters in China who were surveyed, more than 40% believed that the reporting environment in China had worsened, compared to 29% in 2016.

The crackdown on journalists is only one facet of the increased effort to control information about abuses in China. In particular, authorities are trying to stop evidence of their campaign against religion from reaching the outside world.

The efforts to control information are varied and are being directed by high government officials.

For example, a government worker from Kaifeng city, in central China’s Henan Province, revealed that government departments convened a meeting in June to address the control of information. Officials demanded strict precautions to prevent reporters from gathering evidence of demolished churches, shredded religious couplet banners, and similar embarrassing details. They also established guidelines for prompt reporting to central authorities if any such information should get into reporters’ hands.

The extent to which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is trying to control the spread of information is demonstrated best by real-world examples. On August 25, the cross of an urban church of Xixia county, in Nanyang city in Henan Province, was torn down. Before the demolition, police established a cordon around a wide area surrounding the church and dispersed all individuals and vehicles within it. Police justified their action by falsely claiming that an electrical line had been damaged and was being repaired, and they turned off all lighting in the area.

According to workers who participated in the removal of the cross, all pedestrians were forbidden from approaching. The workers themselves were not allowed to carry cellphones to prevent the incident from being filmed.

In another example, Mr. Zhao (a pseudonym), a Bitter Winter contributor, was discovered by police while filming a church being shut down. An officer took away his phone and used pepper spray on Mr. Zhao. In a bit of luck for our reporter, some pepper spray leaked on the officer’s hand, and he hastily tried to clean it off. Mr. Zhao seized the opportunity and quickly fled the scene of the incident.

But the police did not give up: In order to eliminate the video evidence, they found Mr. Zhao’s family and threatened that if Mr. Zhao didn’t return home, or if he released the video, they would hold him criminally responsible.

Some city residents have reported to Bitter Winter that when crosses were being dismantled at nearby churches, police would videotape pedestrians who were walking around nearby to prevent them from taking pictures. In addition, officials dressed in civilian clothes regularly joined the crowd to monitor what was happening, and police dispatched a remote-control camera drone to observe the entire process.

On Christmas Eve, a Three-Self church in Henan’s Xinxiang city was cordoned off by police, and over 40 police officers and government officials were posted at nearby intersections to intercept believers and stop them from going into the church to celebrate Christmas. At this time, one city resident passed by the church while replying to a message on his phone. The police, however, thought he was taking pictures. Six or seven officers violently beat him for five minutes, leaving him bleeding from the head.

Authorities have also taken steps to protect official documents on religious policy from falling into the wrong hands. These efforts are in response to recent leaks of internal documents related to the CCP’s subjugation of religion.

One Three-Self church leader in Ningde city, in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian, reported that government meetings on religious policy are now extremely cautious about confidentiality. Organizers at one such meeting demanded that attendees enter one-by-one, in the order that each attendee was written on their list, and they verified all identities carefully. No one who was not on the list was allowed to enter or exit the meeting premises. All phones had to be turned off, pictures and audio recording were prohibited, and no one was allowed to remove papers from the meeting.

One inside source from Tieling city, in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province, stated that when some jurisdictions hold meetings about religion, they do so without using any documentation. Instead, information is only transmitted orally to prevent classified documents from being leaked.

Arrests for uploading or forwarding documentation of religious persecution are still frequent in China. However, it is getting more difficult to publicize materials if you can get them. In mid-August 2018, when one Christian from Henan’s Jiyuan city was using WeChat on his cellphone to forward a picture of a church, he immediately received a message warning him that he was “stealing state secrets.”

CCP authorities seem to be concerned that evidence of their persecution will tarnish their image abroad. But in today’s world, it is very hard to cover up all evidence of human rights abuses, as Bitter Winter documents daily.

UPDATE

Comprehensive crackdowns for 'social stability'
by Wang Anyang

February 11, 2019

Bitter Winter has acquired an 18-page-long internal document issued by the authorities of a city in Liaoning in May 2018. The document details the methods by which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to “maintain social stability.”

Entitled Implementation Suggestions for 2018 Social Stability Maintenance Tasks for the Leading Group for Maintaining Social Stability, it calls for faster development of the “Sharp Eyes” Project, promotion of the “Fengqiao Experience,” and the completion of a digitization system.

Bitter Winter has documented individually some of these programs, such as the 'Fengqiao Experience' to deploy citizen monitors to report on religious individuals; the Sharp Eyes Project which places surveillance cameras throughout the countryside; and use of the Social Credit System to restrict the activities of public intellectuals and dissidents. This new document helps to see how the different social stability control programs fit together.

The document explains that the CCP wants to establish a “safe and reliable inter-departmental big data platform” as quickly as possible, “promoting the modernization of social stability maintenance tasks through intelligence and informatization.”

Over the past year, in particular, an Orwellian surveillance system has taken shape in the name of maintaining social stability.

The document lists many – and growing – potential causes of social instability, including
- the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989;
- poverty and its alleviation issues;
- the lack of employment for university and college graduates;
- poor provisions for retired military personnel; and
- fluctuation of stock and real-estate markets. T
he government believes each of these, or a combination of them, could lead to mass protests.

According to this document, authorities are working to manage these social problems to “prevent and defuse social conflicts, starting from the source” to ensure the prevention of mass uprisings. They aren’t trying to solve these social issues, but merely manage them to keep their grip on power.

For handling problems with retired military personnel, for example, the document states that officials must “do their utmost in handling key mass stability tasks for retired military personnel… enhance educational guidance, and concentrate them [retirees] around the Party and the government.”

“Leading troublemakers” that can’t be “persuaded,” on the other hand, must be “seriously handled.” As for how to solve actual problems for retired military personnel, the document offers no instruction.

Some commenters believe that increasing pressures and conflicts in grassroots society are beginning to fuel public grievances. Mass movements currently underway in Venezuela calling for regime change are putting the CCP on edge. Thus, the resolution of issues in grassroots society has become a priority in social stability maintenance.

As per the CCP, the first step in controlling grassroots grievances is to control ideology, which has always been one of the Party’s core areas of concern, and authorities are only allowing doctrines that protect the current regime to exist.

The document demands, “Clear-cut stands, opposing and resisting the infiltration of western ideology; opposing and resisting erroneous ideological trends and viewpoints against the leadership of the Party or attacking socialism with Chinese characteristics; and maintenance of integrated, society-wide ideologies, as well as the stability of public sentiment.”

Intimately tied to ideological control is the CCP’s control of the Internet.
- The document indicates that officials must “purge the sensitive, harmful information online against the leadership of the Party, the fundamental routes of the Party, and the socialist road with Chinese characteristics.”
- They must also “enhance management of online groups such as QQ and WeChat groups, and shut down activities that threaten state security and social stability.”
- The document also demands to target key online personnel and critical groups.
- It singles out the need to handle mass online and real-world activities, such as going to provincial capital cities or Beijing for assemblies, in a timely matter, and to rank such activities highly among social stability maintenance tasks.
- Reportedly, since the end of 2018, large numbers of internet users in Mainland China who had used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to breach the so-called Great Firewall have been questioned and detained, and their Twitter messages have been deleted.
- The document also emphasizes that officials must “enhance the blocking of foreign enemy websites, and effectively obstruct the infiltration of harmful foreign information entering our borders.”

Human rights lawyers, dissidents, and “bad” online “Big Vs” (the term in China for influential opinion leaders whose identities are certified and who have large numbers of followers on Weibo, a Chinese social platform) are targets subject to control and supervision. The document demands that officials “take strict precautions to prevent (human rights activists, dissidents, and Big Vs) from
- engaging in activities that disrupt political security and social stability;
- colluding with anti-Chinese western forces;
- absolutely forbid leaders from emerging from among the dissidents; and
- absolutely forbid the formation of an opposing political faction.”

As for human rights organizations and other types of illegal groups and their activities, the document states that
- officials must “promptly persuade those that can be persuaded to disband, and resolutely crack down on those who won’t listen to dissuasion and insist on continuing their activities.”
- The CCP lists Falun Gong, The Church of Almighty God, and other religious groups that are deemed to fraternize with foreign powers as primary targets for “Color Revolution” prevention.

Overall, the push for mass surveillance highlights the challenges facing advocates for religious freedom and human rights in China. But it also highlights the current fear gripping the regime that they could be vulnerable to a Color Revolution of their own.

I suppose if it was that easy for Jorge Bergoglio to dismiss the millions of murders committed by the Communists against their own people as 'things of the past', at the time he was trying to wangle any agreement he could from Beijing, now that he has that agreement - however oppressive and wrong it is for the Church and for the Catholics of China - how much easier it is for him to just ignore the new repressions ordered by his new partners.

It's the same moral relativism that makes him condone and justify Islamist terrorist acts. A relativism that he brings to preposterous heights when dealing with Catholics - in which he claims that 'sins below the belt' are minor sins but 'crimes against the environment' are unforgivable. This is a pope who has gladly exchanged the Ten Commandments for whatever the United Nations dictates.