China-Watcher Concerned for Relatives of White House Protestors
by Chad Groening
April 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A staunch critic of the Chinese Communist regime says dissidents showed a great deal of courage in protesting Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, DC, last week. But he believes the protestors' families could face trouble back home. While the communist leader dined with President Bush in the East Room, protestors could be seen and heard outside. Earlier on the White House lawn a woman had been arrested and hauled away for shouting at the Chinese president during his address. Forty-seven-year-old Wang Wenyi, a member of the Falun Gong sect, now faces up to six months in jail for her vocal protest.
Steve Mosher of the Population Research Institute (PRI) says protestors like Wang have a first-hand knowledge of the regime's brutality. "They have lived through the imprisonment, they have lived through the torture, [and] they've lived through the political campaigns," he says. "They meet every day with having their e-mails intercepted. They know that friends and family ... aren't able to worship freely in China. The list of abuses goes on and on."
The PRI president believes officials with the Chinese Embassy videotaped the protestors and may have already sent the tape to the Ministry of State Security in China, where he says their faces will be entered into computers and identified.
"Their relatives in China, if they have any, will [then] get visits from the Ministry of State Security -- and the Ministry of State Security officials will warn them about the activities of their son or daughter or brother or sister, and say that if they don't stop doing these things, you will be punished -- 'you' being the people in China."
Mosher says Americans must understand the truth about President Hu and how he treats Christians and other religious dissidents in his country. A spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs recently reported that "religious freedom" exists in the People's Republic of China only for those who are "communist first -- and religious after that" -- but not for Christians who choose to put Christ first.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
