Advertise in this spot on CatholicCulture.org. View all ads.

Catholic World News News Feature

Christians arrested in China for "revealing state secrets" February 25, 2004

China's Communist government has arrested two Christian leaders and charged them with revealing state secrets, according to a New York-based human rights group on Wednesday.

Human Rights in China said Liu Fenggang was arrested on October 13 after doing research on the persecution of underground Protestant "house churches," and Xu Yonghai was arrested a month later. The group said the men's wives were notified on Monday of the charges, which could bring sentences ranging from 5 years to life in prison.

"It is ludicrous to designate as a state secret actions taken against members of the public such as the destruction of a house of worship and personal property," the Human Rights in China's president Liu Qing said in a statement. "The government should certainly feel ashamed of such actions, which in no way conform with China's claims of respecting freedom of worship."

Both Xu and Liu have been active in the Chinese underground churches and had previously been sent to labor camps in the 1990s for writing an essay about how Christians should help the poor, according to the Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy, which is based in Hong Kong.