China: Members of banned 'cult' jailed amid religious movements' crackdown

September 27,  2016
Reuters

China's officially atheist Communist Party has particularly taken aim at cults, which have multiplied across the country in recent years.

China has jailed members of what the government calls a cult for causing deaths, organising the group and illegally collecting money, state media said on Tuesday, part of a crackdown on what Beijing views as dangerous religious movements.

China's officially atheist Communist Party brooks no challenge to its rule and is obsessed with social stability. It has particularly taken aim at cults, which have multiplied across the country in recent years. Demonstrations have been put down with force and some sect leaders executed.

The official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday said Yao Xiangzhi, a member of Mentuhui, or "Disciples Sect" in the central province of Hubei, caused the death of another cult member by denying him freedom, food and drink for a week while people prayed for his recovery from schizophrenia.

Yao was also found guilty of organising a cult and was jailed for three years.

Mentuhui, which was classified as a cult by the government in the 1990s, was also accused of illegally collecting 40 million yuan ($6 million) between 2011 and 2014 through donations and businesses, Xinhua reported. That money was then funnelled into the hands of Mentuhui leaders for personal use, said Xinhua, citing a deputy police chief.

It was not immediately possible to reach representatives of the religious group or lawyers for those found guilty for comment.

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-china-members-of-banned-cult-jailed-amid-religious-movements-crackdown-2259312

Campaign to Crack Down on Fringe Sects in China Worries Mainstream Churches

Andrew Jacobsjune
June 11, 2014

BEIJING — Last month, as she waited for her husband and 7-year-old son at a McDonald’s in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, Wu Shuoyan was approached by members of a Christian sect who were on an aggressive recruitment drive.

After Ms. Wu refused to give them her number, several members of the group beat and kicked her to death, an act of brutality captured by cellphone and widely shared on the Internet.

Although the Chinese public’s outrage initially focused on the many bystanders who failed to intervene, the national news media has sought to shift the indignation toward what the government calls “evil cults” — the roughly two dozen outlawed religious sects often demonized by the authorities as coercive and dangerous.

In the two weeks since the killing, state-run publications have produced a steady drumbeat of alarming articles detailing what they say are the predations of the Church of Almighty God, the group blamed for the McDonald’s attack. On Tuesday, the Xinhua news agency said the authorities had rounded up about 1,500 cult members, although it appears many of those were arrested as early as 2012.

“Religious cults recruit and control adherents by fabricating and spreading superstitions and heresies,” the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement carried by state-run news media last Wednesday.

China's 'cult' crackdown: 1,500 members of two sects rounded up

Associated Press
06/11/2014

BEIJING -- China on Wednesday announced the roundup of hundreds of alleged cult members following a deadly attack in which a group of adherents beat a woman to death in a McDonald's restaurant.

Slightly more than 1,500 cult members have been detained and prison terms handed out to at least 59, the official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday. It wasn't clear when the arrests took place, although the reports said some went back as far as two years.

Wednesday's reports appeared to be an effort to reassure the public following outrage over violence and other illegal activity blamed on cult adherents.

The reports said cult members were given terms of up to four years on charges of "using a cult organization to undermine enforcement of the law." Accusations against them included that they used threats, violence and other illegal measures to expand their memberships and organizations.

Those detained were allegedly members of the Church of Almighty God and the Disciples Sect, groups drawing on an unorthodox reading of Christian scripture.

Six members of the Church of Almighty God are accused of beating a woman to death at a McDonald's in the eastern city of Zhaoyuan last month after she refused to tell them her phone number as part of a recruitment drive.

The group, whose Chinese name "Quannengshen" also translates as "All-powerful spirit," was founded in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang in the early 1990s and later spread to the country's eastern provinces, according to Chinese media reports.

China has struggled at times to control grassroots religious movements based on Christian or Buddhist ideology, most notably the Falungong meditation movement that attracted millions of adherents before being repressed in 1999.