As I keep highlighting here at Vital Signs Blog, Communist China has their own special way of preparing for the Olympic Games -- like increasing their persecution of Christians and political dissidents.Here's some of the findings from the most recent report from China Aid:
* There was an overall rise in persecution perpetrated by Communist officials in the last year.
* The government's persecution of house churches extended into 18 provinces and one municipality directly under the jurisdiction of the Central Government. There were 60 such actions, up 30.4 percent from that of 2006.
* The total number of people persecuted in China was 788, up 18.5 percent from that of the year before.
* The total number of people arrested and detained was 693, up 6.6 percent from that of the year before.
* A total of 415 church leaders were arrested in 2007. This accounts for 59.9 percent of all people arrested.
* There were seven known instances of government action against the operation, printing, transportation and distribution of Christian publications.
* China Aid said that because of "Operation Typhoon No. 5," over 100 foreign Christians were arrested, interrogated and expelled from the country. Most of these were Christians from the West and a few of them were Christians from South Korea and other countries.
* About 70 foreign Christians were persecuted in Xinjiang. Some of these foreign Christians were not missionaries, but had their own secular professions in China. However, as they preached the Christian belief or were associated with local Christians and churches, they were persecuted by the government. This is the largest persecution operation of expelling foreign Christians since the early 1950s when the CPC drove out all of the foreign missionaries, China Aid said.
For more, here's Robert Duncan's story.
