China Detains Church Members Over Public Praying
China Detains Church Members Over Public Praying
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: April 10, 2011
BEIJING — The police detained dozens of members of an underground Protestant church on Sunday morning, after the congregation tried to pray in a public plaza in the north of the capital.
A parishioner was ordered into a van by a plainclothes police officer in Beijing on Sunday.
The police corralled scores of parishioners into buses and blocked church leaders from leaving their homes. Among those detained was a photographer from The New York Times, who was later released.
Last week the church, Shouwang, was evicted from the space it had been renting after the government pressured the landlord not to renew the lease. The congregation, one of the largest so-called house churches in China, has been seeking legal recognition from the authorities since 2006 without success.
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