07/11/2020 China (International Christian Concern) – At 5 a.m. on July 7, dozens of government officials descended upon two churches in China’s Zhejiang province, bringing crane to forcibly remove the crosses atop these state-approved churches.
According to Father Francis Liu from the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness, the churches at Aodi and Yinchang were ambushed by the government. They not only destroyed church property and damaged many locks, they also clashed with the believers who protested against them. An elderly man who is more than 80-year-old was pushed to the ground.
Liu said that some local Christians predict that perhaps the government will initiate another wave of cross removal. A house church pastor from Wenzhou told ICC that it is still too early to judge whether or not the cross removal campaign has come back from other provinces.
Zhejiang’s Wenzhou city saw thousands of crosses removed from 2014-2016, thanks to the then Party Secretary Xia Baolong of Zhejiang Province. Xia now heads the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and many are concerned that churches in Hong Kong might become his next targets.
