An area particularly involved in the campaign
is the Ouhai district of Wenzhou city, located in eastern Zhejiang province.
Since November, officials in that
area have shut down 239 unregistered religious
facilities and destroyed some 210 churches and temples. However,
the Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy has put the number of destroyed
buildings much higher, at 1,200. One temple blown up in the Shifen township
near Wenzhou was
the 100 year-old Yangshan temple.
According to a spokesman from the Beijing-based
Administration for Religious Affairs, the crackdown was not a national
one. The Hong Kong rights center
believes it is possible the central government
ordered local governments to step up actions against “underground?religious
groups for fear they could
disrupt society like the banned Falun Gong Spiritual
group that still continues to carry out protests in Tiananmen.
Teng Chunyan, 37, is married to an American citizen
and currently has permanent residency in the U.S. Teng entered China
earlier this year and began to
collect evidence on the detention of Falun Gong
members in mental hospitals, according to a Hong-Kong based human rights
monitoring group.
She was then arrested in March in the southern
city of Shenzhen. Teng was tried by the No. 1 Intermediate People’s
Court in Beijing and then sentenced
for spying at a secret hearing after a November
hearing. U.S. officials were banned from attending her trial, even
though Beijing is obliged to grant U.S.
diplomats access to American citizens arrested
in China. Teng, however is not yet a full citizen.
U.S. diplomats in Beijing called for her release
in meetings at the Foreign Ministry, and in Washington the issue was raised
with the Chinese embassy, a U.S.
official told Reuters.
The incident could be an irritant in Sino-U.S.
relations as the two countries prepare to reopen human rights dialogues
cut off after the U.S. bombing of
China’s embassy in Belgrade.
The trip by Lu to Afganistan came after the Taliban pleaded with Beijing
to veto U.S-Russian requests to tighten sanctions against the ruling militia.
These
new sanctions would include travel restrictions against its officials
and an arms embargo.
Results of the meeting were not discussed afterwards. China has
been concerned about the Taliban harboring Muslim separatists from the
Xinjiang region
in China and training them militarily to commit cross-border terrorism.
This was denied by Foreign Minister Mutawakel.
Last updated: 22 December 2000
