It's El Salvador- at least- all over again

When I was in seminary, support for the Leftist rebels in El Salvador was all the rage. This was understandable, in a sense, because the government there was run by fascist thugs. The problem was that both the romantic Marxism of some of my classmates and the earnest, naive zeal of others failed to balance a legitimate contempt for Salvadoran thugs and totalitarians of the Right with an equal abhorrence for Salvadoran thugs and totalitarians of the Left.

In Third World country after Third World country, movements which everybody at Wartburg Seminary was sure represented justice, democracy, and general wonderfulness have since taken power- and proven to be at least as vicious and repressive a bunch of thugs as the bunch of thugs they replaced. This was not hard to predict for those few of us not wholly caught up in the spell of Liberation Theology, and who retained some sense of history and proportion.

But we were few, and marginal. Instead, the voices most admired were the voices raised in fantasy for the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering- and in realilty for the Marxist revolutionaries.

It was a mark of distinction back then to have actually been to El Salvador. By a logic not wholly sound, but shared by many naive folks on both the Right and the Left over the years, the assumption seemed to be that the mere act of having set foot in a country made you in some sense an expert in its affairs- or at least better qualified to discuss them than somebody who had not, regardless of the quantity or quality of either party's sources of information.

It simply never occured to those poor, trusting souls that from the moment they got off the plane in El Salvador, they were shown exactly what their sponsors wanted them to see, and allowed to hear exactly what their sponsors wanted them to hear. It never seemed to dawn on them that the information they were receiving was awfully one-sided; they were too caught up in the beguiling notion that what they heard and saw all fit the party line because the party line was true. They came home thoroughly indoctrinated, burning with (self) righteous zeal- and utterly impossible to reason with.

I recently blogged on the widespread reports of a Chinese death camp at Sujiatun where the organs of members of a persecuted Buddhist-like sect are said to be harvested for sale on the international market, and on a second exhibit of plasticized human bodies from China- many suspected to be those of executed political prisoners, and perhaps of Sujiatang inmates- currently on display in the West.

Both posts have received energetic, somewhat repetitious, and vehement responses from Sunday service in Xinzheng, apparently an American in China who seems rather heavily invested in defending something which is totally non-existent: the honor of the Bejing regime.

I think I see the El Salvador syndrome at work here.

Sunday blogs at A Church in China. It's about what he doesn't seem to realize gives every indication of being an official, government-sponsored congregation of the type which exists for the express purpose of deceiving naive Westerners- well, like Sunday service.

He actually believes, on the basis of his experience (!), that there is religious freedom in China.

This is what Sunday service is defending- and not only on my blog, either. He seems to be making a tour of blogs that mention Sujiatan, spreading the diabolical "gospel" of literally the most murderous regime in human history, and an active persecuter of the Church of Christ.

Sunday has also started a second blog for the express purpose of defending the murderers in Bejing from the Sujiatun charges! He has, it should be said, apparently deleted one defending the harvesting of organs for the government's profit. He may have re-thought the human rights issues involved in the government stealing one's very body parts even in death, and selling them for its own profit- this independent of the question of whether one was shot for one's religious or political beliefs.

I don't know whether the rumors about Sujiatun are true or not. I do know that it would take extreme naivette to believe that religious freedom exists in China, though doubtless there is more freedom in some places than others. And it would take at least as much naivette not to realize that, true or not, those rumors about the death camp are so much in accord with not the barbaric track record of the Beijing regime as to have instant credibility- and far greater credibility, at that, than the credibility the regime has in denying them.

Sunday service assures us that American and other Western governments and diplomats assure us that it is safe for us to visit Sujiatun (the town- certainly not the "hospital," as it's called, which is walled off and closely guarded, and which nobody gets into. Relatively few are said to come out, either. At least in one piece).

But nobody has ever suggested that visiting the town is anything other than safe to visit. As long, that is, as you aren't too inquisitive about the "hospital."

Sunday goes on to tell us that the U.S. consul at Sujiatun assures him that the story isn't true. But how would the consul know? And how long would that particular consul be welcome in China if he had expressed doubts on the matter?

Other officials of Western governments give the same assurance, Sunday tells us- apparently not reflecting upon the diplomatic ramifications giving any other answer would have. No, diplomatic and political officials even of our own government, at least if they're speaking on the record, are probably not the most reliable sources in this case.

"There is no proof," Sunday suggests. He's wrong. There's the testimony of the dissidents, some of whom claim to be eye-witnesses. There's a hospital which, if it isn't a concentration camp, is run with level of security more appropriate for one than for a hospital. What is there about a mere hospital that the regime is so eager to hide?

But those things aren't all. There is much, much more.

This blog gives an account of the arithmetic by which its author, who has made an extensive study of such behavior by modern governments, arrives at a figure of 76,702.000 people murdered by the Bejing regime through 1987. That's seventy six million seven hundred and two thousand. And that doesn't even include the last twenty years!

Compare that with his figures elsewhere of 61,911,000 for the Soviet Union, and 20,946.000 for Nazi Germany (as he explains in a footnote, he revised his figure for Communist China upward by 38,000,000 because he had initially neglected to include the victims of Mao's deliberate starvation of that number for the purpose of social engineering between 1958 and 1962).

Sunday service asks in one of his comments whether I'm aware of the seriousness of comparing Sujiatun to Auschwitz. Of course I am. That's the point! Trouble is, I don't think he's aware of how natural a comparison of the record of the Beijing regime with that of Nazi Germany truly is- and that in the mass murder department, it would be Hitler who would come in a bad second best.

Well, third best, actually.

Freedom of religion in China? Only the officially sponsored and run Three Self Patriotic Movement (mock-Protestant, and totally under the Communist thumb) and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (a pseudo-Catholic group which answers, not to the Vatican, but to the atheists in Bejing) operate without government harassment. That is not surprising, since the government runs them- down to the themes and texts of the sermons that are preached. The Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of religion for all, but in all but the most technical sense, only these government- controled "churches" are legal. Chinese law requires churches to register- and only government-controlled churches are allowed to do so.

The independent and persecuted house churches are essentially outlaw congregations- and while there may be local exceptions, they are by and large treated as such. Their treatment, again, by all accounts does vary from region to region, but everywhere they are regarded with hostility and suspicion by the government. From time to time crackdowns result in mass arrests and the detention of pastors and lay leaders in prisons or labor camps ("re-education" through forced labor is a favorite tactic of the regime, not infrequently resorted to in these cases).

A detailed account of the religious situation in China is given here. Another, with more specific reference to Christianity in China, is here.

The plight of those in those unregistered house churches, who regard Jesus, rather than the Communist Party, as Lord and Savior is often a bleak one indeed. Liu Xianzhi, a house church member from southern China, tells her story of torture at the hands of the Chinese government here. Her pastor remains in prison on charges of rape stemming from accusations obtained from his "accusers" by torturing the women until they made them.

Zhang Rongliang,a prominent leader in the House Church movement, is about to finally stand trial on "illegal border crossing" charges- after being in prison for two years.

Here is an account of a raid on a house church which took place only last month. 24 arrested pastors remain unaccounted for.

Here is a report on an appeal from the European Parliament to the Chinese government, asking it to halt its persecution of Christians.

Here is an account which bends over backwards to make the point that discrimination and harassment are currently the fate of the members of"unregistered" Christian congregations far more often than beatings and imprisonment, and that conditions are better than they used to be (international pressure being no small part of the reason). But it also establishes that Bibles are still being confiscated and their purveyors arrested for disseminating "evil cult propaganda."

"Evil cult," btw, is a term often used in legal procedings against members of unregistered churches. This is a list of 56 persecuted members of the unregistered Chinese churches, including brief summary of some of their cases. Note the charges against them.

But I'm sorry, Sunday. If you're in China, that means that unless you have a special dispensation as a foreigner, you won't be able to access those pages on the internet- and that you could be arrested if you were caught trying.

Are things, on the whole, somewhat better than they used to be? No one denies that- or that the persecution of unregistered congregations waxes and wanes over time. Are there parts of China where Christianity is openly practiced without undue oppression even by members of unregistered groups, and Bibles can be disseminated without their being confiscated and those who distribute them imprisoned or beaten? A few, without doubt- and especially where it serves the regime's purposes that it be so. But there can be no doubt either that the regime in Beijing continues to harass and persecute believers in China who are not firmly under its thumb, and to suggest otherwise is to aid and abet them in that persecution and harassment. To suggest otherwise is more than willful naivette. It is enabling behavior. It comes close to being complicity.

Now back to Sujiatun. Are the charges the professed eye-witnesses make true? They are very much in keeping with China's track record. Can they be conclusively proven? Awfully hard to do in a ruthless police state, especially one absolutely determined, with good cause, to prevent them from being proven.

But China could disprove them instantly. Of course, it would need help. With the regime's record of mass murder and deceit, there would be very little credibility to an opening of the "hospital" for foreign inspection if the Chinese initiated it and had time to move the prisoners- er, patients- elsewhere and hide the evidence. It would have to be a foreigner, arriving without warning- and being freely admitted beyond those walls, and out again to freely tell the world what he saw.

Diplomacy wouldn't permit officials of the UN or of foreign governments to do so. But what about you, Sunday service? Why not go to Sujiatun, march up to the guards, and ask to be given a tour of the place? Then let us know what they say.

As I've said before, I don't know whether the charges about Sujiatun are true or not. I have no proof, because proof would be impossible without Chinese government cooperation (convenient, isn't it?). That's the trouble with trying to verify charges against police states.

But there is evidence. Does it lead me to believe the charges? Well, let's put it this way: the case for the prosecution is stronger than the case for the defense. Certainly it cannot be denied that the activity ascribed to the Chinese government at Sujiatan would be very much of a piece with its historical pattern. "Prior bad acts," I believe the lawyers call it. The treatment of a state hospital as a prison camp would be treated, and especially the act of sealing off a mere hospital so completely from the outside world, seems to suggest a consciousness of guilt. The harvesting of organs from condemned prisoners is a practice the Chinese government freely admits to. The execution of political dissidents is an established practice in China.

The circumstantial evidence seems pretty strong, given the power of the Chinese state to suppress any other kind. And according to Discovery Magazine, one of those plasticized bodies in Gunther von Hagen's touring exhibit has a bullet hole in the back of its head.

But maybe the Chinese are behaving the way they are in Sujiatun out of habit- because that's the way police states behave. Maybe the whole thing is being blown up out of proportion. The problem is, though, that when you behave barbarically for eighty years, people come to expect it of you- and it becomes far more believable to those who know that history than you, Sunday service, might in your innocence think it to be.

Maybe none of the roughly seventy seven million people that regime has murdered have been murdered at Sujiantun. But I would suggest, to paraphrase the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, that twenty million here and twenty million there, and pretty soon you have a regime that's not above mass murder- and from whom, actually, those who know its history begin to expect it.

In any case, Sunday, please don't make the mistake those seminarians and clergy I knew who visited El Salvador made. Consider that what you are shown in China, and what you are allowed to see and to hear by its totalitarian regime, will be exactly what it wants you to see and hear- and that for that reason it might not be the best basis upon which to form such emphatic opinions. You will be allowed nowhere near a Christian who will tell you anything but what the government wants you to hear- and certainly not in a situation in which he or she might dare actually tell it.

You might just research your client's history before you become such a gung-ho advocate for his cause- and practice just a bit of the skepticism appropriate to one being shown only what his host wants him to see, and allowed to hear only what his host wants him to hear.

ADDENDUM: Subsequently the "hospital" at Sujiatan was indeed thrown open to inspection by the West- and received a clean bill of health, as it were.

Chinese dissidents had previously warned that the facility was being evacuated, and the prisoners held there dispersed to less centralized locations all over China.