China: Police Raid House Church Sunday School in Xinjiang
By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent
BEIJING, CHINA (Worthy News)– Police in Xinjiang recently raided a house church Sunday School, holding 70 children and their teachers for questioning while detaining seven other teachers.
The children were attending special summer classes in the regional capital city of Urumqi when police from the Qiangfanggou station and agents from the Sha district Domestic Security Protection Department interogated all the children and Sunday School teachers; some parents and school principals were also questioned.
As of press time, seven women Sunday School teachers were still being held in the Xishan detention center.
“To prevent children from having access to religious education in the faith of their parents is a direct contravention of the U. N. Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief and U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which was adopted by China in 1992,” said ChinaAid’s founder and president, Dr. Bob Fu. “Arbitrarily detaining peaceful Sunday school teachers is a violation of their citizens’ right to basic religious freedom. We urge the Xinjiang authorities to immediately release them and to halt their continuously intensifying persecution of religious believers, including those the Uyghur minority group who peacefully engage in their religious practices .”