A Christian group, which fled religious persecution in China in 2019 and sought refuge in Thailand, is now seeking asylum in the United States as they face possible deportation by the Thai government.
Some 60 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, left China in October 2019 to escape religious persecution from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
They sought asylum in South Korea but were rejected after three years of court proceedings. In August 2022, the group moved to Thailand on tourist visas and applied for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner.
The Thai government allegedly refused to renew their tourist visas, according to the U.S.-based Christian human rights organization 21Wilberforce, putting the group at risk of deportation to China, where their safety and freedom could be jeopardized.
Trent Martin, advocacy and training coordinator for 21Wilberforce, met with the church members and pastor in Thailand last month, where he learned the extent of the CCP’s efforts to “silence” the church.
He said that the congregants had received threatening calls, messages, and pressure from the CCP to return to the mainland even when they were already living in South Korea.
“Even while they are overseas in Thailand, they still fear the CCP will send agents to kidnap them or pressure the Thai authorities to deport them,” he said.
Martin said the group is currently awaiting approval of their U.N. refugees status and applied for asylum in the United States, but the U.S. government has yet to respond to the request.
“Even though a group of churches and a local resettlement group in the Tyler, Texas area have committed to financially and materially supporting all the asylum seekers’ resettlement to the United States, the U.S. government so far has not offered them humanitarian parole or a pathway to asylum,” he said.
‘Unjust Actions’
On Oct. 24, 2022, the Mayflower Church released a statement outlining the rationale behind its members’ decision to leave China.It claimed that Christian churches across China faced “varying degrees of persecution, defiance, and misunderstanding in their public worship and faith practices from government departments” since the implementation of the CCP’s Religious Affairs Regulation in February 2018.
“Such actions include but are not limited to the tearing down of crosses and spring scrolls hung and posted in Christian homes, forcing and threatening churches to join officially-controlled religious organizations, forcing churches to fly national flags or sing praises of secular states and political parties, forbidding the minor children of Christians from entering churches and receiving education about their faith, and depriving and outlawing churches and believers from meeting freely,” it said.
“We believe that these unjust actions, which we have appealed to cease before the relevant public authorities, have brought Chinese society into a serious conflict between church and state.”
The church claimed that the CCP has continued to threaten its members with persecution since they left China and especially after they moved to Thailand.
“But even if the persecution continues or intensifies, we will never betray our faith. If we lose our freedom during the persecution, our words and actions are not in accordance with the case statement and are not voluntary but must be the result of persecution,” the church said.
“This fear translates into church crackdown, ‘re-education camps’ for Uyghurs, and demolition of Buddhist statues. House churches are bracing themselves for potentially the worst clampdown since the Cultural Revolution,” Goh added.
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