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Persecution in Hebei, a liability for Hu Jintao’s plans
by Wang Hui
Letter slams Wang Zhenguo, Religious Affairs Bureau director in Gao Cheng County, for building a ‘harmonious society’ with violence and terror.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – Underground Catholics in Hebei have sent AsiaNews a letter denouncing the persecution visited upon them. A wave of violence has in fact been unleashed, they tell us, and it is the work of their County’s Religious Affairs Department which has declared an all-out war against the Church.
The long document names those responsible: Wang Zhenguo, Religious Affairs Department director for Gao Cheng County and Chen Xiuyun, deputy governor of Hebei province and director of the United Front Department.
According to the letter’s authors, the officials’ anti-religious attitude is based on nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution and runs counter to the moderate policies of China’s President Hu Jintao, who has been preaching the virtues of development based on a “harmonious society” for the past two years.
Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, has the highest concentration of Catholics in the country: some 1.5 million, mostly in the underground Church. According to a list published by AsiaNews last March, of the many isolated, imprisoned or otherwise unaccounted for clergymen, at least 8 bishops and 13 priests are from Hebei.
For local Catholics, ideological reasons (rigidly Maoist Communism) and economic factors explain the violent policies of the Religious Affairs Department. For them, the fight against religion becomes a smokescreen to conceal the fact that provincial officials have failed to develop Hebei’s economy. In the purest imperial tradition (whether Roman or Chinese), Catholics serve as scapegoats to be persecuted.
The letter also points to another important factor in the Religious Affairs Department’s persecution: its profound ignorance on religious and spiritual matters.
The letter contains some information already published by AsiaNews (on April 28, 2005):
by Wang Hui
Letter slams Wang Zhenguo, Religious Affairs Bureau director in Gao Cheng County, for building a ‘harmonious society’ with violence and terror.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – Underground Catholics in Hebei have sent AsiaNews a letter denouncing the persecution visited upon them. A wave of violence has in fact been unleashed, they tell us, and it is the work of their County’s Religious Affairs Department which has declared an all-out war against the Church.
The long document names those responsible: Wang Zhenguo, Religious Affairs Department director for Gao Cheng County and Chen Xiuyun, deputy governor of Hebei province and director of the United Front Department.
According to the letter’s authors, the officials’ anti-religious attitude is based on nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution and runs counter to the moderate policies of China’s President Hu Jintao, who has been preaching the virtues of development based on a “harmonious society” for the past two years.
Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, has the highest concentration of Catholics in the country: some 1.5 million, mostly in the underground Church. According to a list published by AsiaNews last March, of the many isolated, imprisoned or otherwise unaccounted for clergymen, at least 8 bishops and 13 priests are from Hebei.
For local Catholics, ideological reasons (rigidly Maoist Communism) and economic factors explain the violent policies of the Religious Affairs Department. For them, the fight against religion becomes a smokescreen to conceal the fact that provincial officials have failed to develop Hebei’s economy. In the purest imperial tradition (whether Roman or Chinese), Catholics serve as scapegoats to be persecuted.
The letter also points to another important factor in the Religious Affairs Department’s persecution: its profound ignorance on religious and spiritual matters.
The letter contains some information already published by AsiaNews (on April 28, 2005):
- the arrest of a group of priests for having participated in a spiritual retreat;
- the solitary confinement of Bishop Jia Zhiguo and other bishops upon the death of John Paul II until the election of Benedict XVI.