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TechnoratiIn addition to China’s unregistered house churches, foreign missionaries have also been increasingly targeted as next year’s Olympic Games in Beijing nears. Between April and June more than 100 foreign missionaries were expelled from China as part of a government-sponsored campaign to prevent evangelization during the Olympics.
“China wants to weed out the potential ‘troublemakers’ and put its best foot forward to the world,” reported Dr. Carl Moeller, president and CEO of the persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA, in a statement last month.
While the government is hoping through its campaigns to prevent protests or other disturbances at the 2008 Games, the persecution has instead gained international media attention with many human rights and Christian groups calling for people worldwide to boycott the Games if China does not change its ways and show greater respect for human rights, including religious freedom.
"The government seems afraid that its own citizens will embarrass it by speaking out about political and social problems, but China's leaders apparently don't realize authoritarian crackdowns are even more embarrassing," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report posted online last month.
"Just as Chinese citizens will be rooting for their athletes to win medals, we are rooting for the Chinese government to move up in the league tables on rights protection," he added.
The New York-based group’s report criticized Beijing for a “well-documented history of serious human rights abuses, including…torture, censorship of media and internet, control on religious freedom, and repression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.”
