ICC NOTE: The Chinese government does not seem to let up anytime soon on their massive crackdown on Christian lawyers, democratic activists, and cross removals. The move continues a pattern by the communist regime where certain points in time they will ease up on the Christian community followed by a crackdown on their activity and presence in the country. The peaks and valleys make the life of Chinese Christians on edge as there is no definitive signal for the change in the wind. Recent reports have the number of crosses removed or demolished to be over 2,000. Pastors and Christian lawyers are detained for “inciting public unrest” and held without formal arrest for months. Yet during this time of persecution, the church is flourishing with the number swelling to over 110 million acknowledging Christians. 

4/15/2016 China (Radio Free Asia) – China’s already poor human rights record worsened with a sweeping crackdown on lawyers, activists and bloggers in 2015, a year that saw Beijing extend abusive and unlawful enforcement practices across borders to Hong Kong and Thailand, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday in an annual report.

The report which covers the 2015 calendar year, President Xi Jinping’s third full year in office, saw particularly harsh policies and curbs on movement and communication in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and Tibetan areas – regions where Beijing rules with a heavy hand to stamp out anything it perceives as separatism.

“In China, repression and coercion markedly increased during the year against organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy,” said the annual report on every other country in the world.

“The crackdown on the legal community was particularly severe, as individual lawyers and law firms that handled cases the government deemed ‘sensitive’ were targeted for harassment and detention,” it said.

The push against the legal profession, whose growing prominence was not long ago seen as a rare bright spot in China’s rights picture, saw “hundreds of lawyers and law associates interrogated, investigated, and in many cases detained in secret locations for months without charges or access to attorneys or family members,” the State Department noted.

The report noted the disappearances or detentions of lawyer Wang Yu, who represented noted feminist activists; Li Heping, who represented underground church members and members of the banned Falun Gong sect; and Zhang Kai, who defended churches facing demolition.

“Authorities resorted to extralegal measures, such as enforced disappearance and strict house arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent public expression of critical opinions,” said the report.

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