The article (passed on to me) below reminds me of YOYO’s comments a while back regarding why the Jws are persecuted (the point being that they must be the true religion then?).
When was the last time you read of JWs being put to death for just being a Christian? The WT would have a field day with it (I don’t count Malawi because anyone who did not buy the “card” was treated the same way. It was not for being a Christian. When was the last time a JW was put to death for just preaching or just being a Christian?). My point is that many other Christians around the world are being “persecuted” for the “Good News.”
BEIJING (AP) - A court in China sentenced the leader of a banned Christian sect to death Sunday, a human rights group said.
The founder of the South China Church, Gong Shengliang, was convicted by the Jingmen City Intermediate Court on charges including ``using a cult to undermine the enforcement of the law,'' the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The church is banned by the government as cult.
Gong's niece Li Ying, also a church leader, was given a death sentence suspended for two years, the center said. Such sentences are usually commuted to life in prison.
The center said the pair were among 17 church organizers sentenced by the court in Hubei province, in eastern China about 600 miles from Beijing. The others received prison sentences ranging from two years to life.
Gong established the church as a splinter sect of another Christian group, the Total Scope Church, the center said. Such groups typically espouse a fundamentalist, evangelical brand of Christianity and operate in defiance of laws requiring Protestants to worship only in the state-controlled nondenominational church.
The church grew over a decade and has 50,000 members spread through some 10 provinces in eastern and central China, the center said. China's Bureau of State Security arrested Gong and the others in April after labeling the church a cult, part of an ongoing campaign against the better-known Falun Gong spiritual sect and other groups seen as challenging the Communist Party's political monopoly.
The charges would be the most serious handed down to the leaders of groups labeled by Beijing as cults since the current crackdown began in July 1999. Leaders of Falun Gong were given prison sentences of up to 18 years.