Wife, son of Chinese human rights attorney who died suspiciously escape to the US

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Pastor Foley

The wife and son of Dr. Li Baiguang, the Chinese human rights attorney who died under suspicious circumstances in 2018, have escaped to the United States, according to the Christian nonprofit groups ChinaAid and Voice of the Martyrs Korea.

Hanmei “Hannah” Xu and Qingxin “Pure Heart” Li arrived in the United States last month and are presently seeking asylum, according to representatives of the two groups.

Hanmei “Hannah” Xu (third from right) and Qingxin “Pure Heart” Li (second from left) holding signs as they are surrounded by volunteers from China Aid upon their arrival in the US.

Dr. Li Baiguang, known for his self-described “ant strategy” of traveling around China to take up hundreds of individual cases defending the religious freedom and human rights of ordinary citizens, rose to prominence internationally after receiving an award from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy in 2008 and being invited for three visits with then-U.S. President George W. Bush. Both his wife and young son were summoned to the police station for interrogation by Chinese authorities in Summer 2015. In October 2017, Dr. Li reported to international observers that he had been abducted, beaten, and threatened with dismemberment by Chinese officials in Zhejiang province for defending farmers whose land had been seized by the government. Then on February 25, 2018, Dr. Li was pronounced dead at a Chinese government military hospital in Nanjing, hours after allegedly checking in for a stomach complaint. The hospital said he had bled to death due to a liver condition. But Dr. Li, who was 49 at the time of his death, was reported by friends and colleagues to have been in good health immediately prior to the announcement of his death.

“Since Dr. Li’s sudden death in early 2018, his wife, Hanmei Xu, has been closely controlled and monitored without freedom of movement by agents arranged by the Communist Party of China in order to prevent her from having contact with anyone overseas,” says the Rev. Dr. Bob Fu, the founder and President of US-based ChinaAid and a long-time friend of the family.

Dr. Li Baiguang (right), Chinese human rights attorney known for his “little ant” strategy of traveling across China to defend the human rights and religious freedoms of ordinary citizens, died under suspicious circumstances at a military hospital in eastern Jiangsu province, China, on February 26, 2018.

Hanmei Xu released the following statement: “After much suffering in China, with the help of ChinaAid and Voice of the Martyrs Korea, we are glad to finally arrive in the USA, land of freedom. We thank all brothers, sisters, and other friends of the international community who have been praying and caring about Li Baiguang and our whole family.”

According to Voice of the Martyrs Korea co-founder and President Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, ChinaAid arranged for the departure of Dr. Li’s family from China and is coordinating their resettlement and asylum process in the US while Voice of the Martyrs Korea is providing the finances and assisting in trauma care.

“Our focus at this point is on providing comfort, support, and stability for the family,” says Foley, who teaches Bible-based trauma recovery strategies to Christians who have experienced persecution for their faith. “We had the privilege of teaching persecution recovery strategies to Dr. Li, and now we have the privilege and heavy responsibility of putting those same strategies into practice with his wife and son.”

Dr. Li was born in 1968 in a mountain village in Hunan Province in south central China as the youngest of seven children. After graduating from Beijing University with a Ph.D on constitutional law, he taught at Hainan University for a year before being arrested for his growing involvement in dissident circles promoting democracy. He subsequently started a publishing business envisioning public education in democracy through the introduction to Chinese readers of books translated from the western liberal democratic tradition. However, he reported that his life was drastically changed by reading and translating a book about the persecution and perseverance of the French Protestant Huguenots in the 17th century.

“He publicly professed his faith in Christ in 2005 and gave up his ‘grand ideas’ about government reform and constitutional change in favor of what he called an ‘ant strategy’”, says ChinaAid’s President Bob Fu.

In his papers and presentations, Dr. Li wrote, “Recently I’ve had a realization: I’m willing to become an ant. I want to take the rights and freedoms in the books and, through case after case, bring them into the real world bit by bit. This is my personal stance. The path to this is legal procedure. In summer, the ant gathers food. Today, I’m also transporting food under the framework of rights defense, and in doing so accumulating experience and results for the arrival of the day.”

Dr. Li Baiguang (second from left) during one of three invitations to visit then-U.S. President George W. Bush.

He patiently and methodically followed each and every step of the legal procedure according to the letter of the law, according to Fu.

In a speech at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 2017, Dr. Li anticipated a major crackdown on human rights and religious freedom was looming. “From this point forward, human rights in China will enter its darkest period,” he said. Fu reported that Dr. Li remained optimistic due to his Christian faith. “He quoted Romans 13,” says Fu, “declaring ‘The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.’”

Though he died a few months later under suspicious circumstances, Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s Dr. Hyun Sook Foley says the safe arrival of Dr. Li’s wife and son in the US is a divine sign that his optimism will be vindicated. “Psalm 146:9 says, ‘The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin’,” says Representative Foley. “The Lord has upheld Hannah and Pure Heart since February 2018. In the end, the little ant’s patient, persistent fight against wickedness will be upheld by the Lord as well.”

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Russian courts rule that personal evangelism is an illegal form of church recruitment

Posted on July 4, 2023 by Pastor Foley

In separate cases in May, courts in Russia’s far northeast Chukotka Autonomous Okrug fined two Christians for personally distributing Bibles and Christian books, ruling that the distributions constituted illegal church recruitment and not personal evangelism.

In separate cases in May, two Christians were fined for personally distributing the Christian books shown here, along with other Christian materials.

The two Christians, Ryshkov Mikhail Ivanovich from the easternmost Russian city of Anadyr and Kovtun Nikolai Alekseevich from the Arctic port town of Pevek, have each filed appeals.

According to Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr Hyun Sook Foley, the cases represent a new level of restriction on personal evangelistic activities for Russian Christians.

“This is the first time that Russian courts have ruled that individual Christians handing out Christian Bibles, books, and tracts in public is an illegal form of church recruitment,” says Representative Foley. “There are previous cases where courts have fined Christians for doing various Christian activities, but those rulings associated the offense with churches’ failure to register with the government. But in these two rulings, no mention is made of the registration status of the defendants’ churches. Instead, the courts criminalized the public distribution of Christian literature, ruling that it is not an act of personal evangelism.”

In the first case, Ryshkov Mikhail Ivanovich was fined for violating Article 24.2 of the Federal Law No. 125-FZ, “On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations”. “On March 11 this year he and a group of friends distributed calendars with the title ‘What God Promised’ along with the Christian books ‘The Most Important Truths’ and ‘Stop and Ask’ and other Christian tracts in the city of Anadyr,” says Representative Foley. “No authorities stopped or interfered with them at that time, but six days later police came to the address shown on the materials and accused him of ‘distributing information about the doctrine of a religious organization among the inhabitants … in order to get new members’.”

Representative Foley says that in the Anadyr district court on May 18, Ryshkov Mikhail Ivanovich pled not guilty. “He explained that he had not distributed the materials to recruit people to his church but to lead people to salvation,” says Representative Foley. “He cited Article 28 of the Russian Constitution, which says that every citizen is guaranteed the freedom to spread their religious beliefs and act in accordance with them.”

According to Representative Foley, the court found Mikhail Ivanovich Ryshkov guilty and fined him 10,000 rubles (approximately 150,000 KRW).

In the second case, Kovtun Nikolai Alekseevich handed out copies of a book called ‘25 Favorite Stories from the Bible’ while at a store in Pevek in March. According to Representative Foley, he also was charged under Article 24.2 of the Federal Law No. 125 -FZ, with authorities contending that distributing the Bibles was an illegal form of church recruitment.

“At the Chaunsky district court on May 31, 2023, Kovtun Nikolai Alekseevich pled not guilty,” says Representative Foley. “His defense was that the Bible is the word of God, not a church recruitment tool. It leads people to God, not just to church. He said that in distributing the Bible stories he was not acting on behalf of any religious organization but as a citizen of the Russian Federation who has the legal right to share his faith.” But according to Dr Foley, the court found him guilty and fined him 5,000 rubles (approximately 75,000 KRW).

Representative Foley says the cases illustrate the increasing difficulties facing evangelical Protestant believers in Russia. “The Russian Orthodox Church exercises strong spiritual as well as political and legal influence across all of Russia,” says Representative Foley. “Where evangelical Protestant practice is different than Russian Orthodox practice, there are growing difficulties for the evangelical practice. For example, in Russian Orthodoxy, evangelism and distribution of Christian literature would indeed be forms of building the church. But for evangelical Protestants, coming to faith in Christ and joining a specific church organization are separate matters. These court cases are just the latest examples showing Russian courts operating according to the Russian Orthodox understanding and criminalizing the Protestant one. It is a trend that Christians around the world should bring to the Lord in prayer.”

Representative Foley says Voice of the Martyrs Korea is also calling for prayers for the Christians and for the judges who will be involved as the two cases are reviewed in appeals courts.

Individuals interested in learning more about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s work with evangelical Russian believers can visit https://vomkorea.com/en/project/russia-ministry/.

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The US State Department’s 2022 NK Religious Freedom Report continues to “bury the lede”

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Pastor Foley

The US State Department’s 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom was released last month. News of the report’s release appeared most commonly in headlines like this:

“North Korea sentenced Christian toddler to life in a prison camp”–UPI

“Toddler in North Korea ‘sentenced to life in prison after parents caught with Bible’”–Telegraph

“North Korea sentenced a toddler to life after his parents were found with a Bible”—Times of India

The US State Department’s 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom.

Some articles noted that the toddler’s alleged imprisonment happened 14 years ago, in 2009. Most, however, omitted any mention of date. Typical was the Times of India report which wrote in a timeless present-tense, “[A] family along with a two year old has also been sentenced to life in a North Korean prison camp as his parents were found in possession of the Bible.”

No media report contained more than a few details about the toddler because the State Department report itself says little more: “One case involved the 2009 arrest of a family based on their religious practices and possession of a Bible. The entire family, including a two-year-old child, were given life sentences in political prison camps.” Presumably the State Department report says little more because the original 2021 Korea Future report from which the State Department cites the incident is itself a brief 61-word “case study”.

This is not to question the validity or importance of reports like those from Korea Future or the State Department. But there is more at issue here than media clickbait. How organs like the State Department report on NK religious issues lends itself to sensationalism, nudging readers closer to shocked, hopeless paralysis rather than informed, motivated action.

Media have a tendency to portray the State Department report as breaking news about North Korea. But the State Department itself makes no such claim. It acknowledges that the report is a selective literature review of previously published third-party reports considered by the US government to be credible and relevant. The report introduction says, “[T]he Department of State is not in a position to verify independently all information contained in the reports. To the extent possible, the reports use multiple sources to increase comprehensiveness and reduce potential for bias. The views of any particular source are not necessarily those of the United States government. The report is designed to spotlight examples of government and societal action that typify and illuminate issues reported in each country.”

What typifies and illuminates religion in North Korea? According to the State Department report, “Multiple sources indicated the situation had not fundamentally changed since publication of the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in the DPRK.” The report cites a 2021 white paper by the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) that it is “practically impossible for North Korean people to practice religion.”

What the State Department annually portrays about religion in North Korea is that it remains in a steady state of bad. As the report says, “The government reportedly continued to execute, torture, arrest, and physically abuse individuals for their religious activities.” When it comes to religion in North Korea, it doesn’t matter if the 2-year old is now 14. It is simply timelessly bad in North Korea. There is little more to do than to add more of the same distressing anecdotes to the pile.

Careful readers of the State Department report, however, may find themselves asking: If there are indeed 100,000 to 400,000 Christians in North Korea, what do they do all day other than get beaten? If religious life is practically impossible for them, are they simply hunkering down and praying for regime change so they can once again be religious?

While the State Department’s report changes little from year to year, the State Department is mistaken that North Korean religious life is endlessly stuck in 2014. One of the reports the State Department does not cite is the 2020 White Paper on Religious Freedom by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, the latest update in a longitudinal study. As the 2020 paper details, 20 years ago virtually no one inside North Korea had seen a Bible with their own eyes. But by 2016, the number of those inside North Korea who had seen a Bible had jumped to nearly 8 percent. In the 2020 report, the Center says that number has continued to increase by 4 percent annually. More North Koreans may be reading the Bible today than at any other time in history.

And if roughly 1.6 million North Koreans have now seen a Bible, a KINU report estimates that 10 to 30%, or between 2 and 6 million, have listened to illegal foreign radio broadcasts. As the State Department knows from confidential US government reports, religious programs are among the most popular broadcasts inside North Korea, which is why the North Korean government has significantly increased its jamming efforts against them. Yet, even though listening to religious radio broadcasts is likely the most widespread religious activity among North Koreans, it receives essentially no mention in the State Department report.

A North Korean defector records a radio broadcast at VOM Korea’s radio studio.

Religious life inside North Korea today is not the same as 2014, nor is it a practical impossibility. There is a massive popular information movement underway, much of it centered around religion. If religious life in North Korea was reducible to brief yearly anecdotes about beatings for Bibles, then the world could simply stand by, shake its collective head, and leave the matter to governments to sort out. But if faith is a dynamic, active, spreading force in North Korean daily life, then the State Department’s latest religious freedom report continues to bury the lede.

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