BEIJING – Beijing police on Sunday detained dozens of worshippers from an unapproved Christian church who were trying to hold services in a public space after they were evicted from their usual place of worship, a parishioner said.
Leaders of the unregistered Shouwang church had told members to gather at an open-air venue in Beijing for Sunday morning services, but police, apparently alerted to their plans, taped off the area and took away people who showed up to take part.
Chinese authorities have been on high alert for large public gatherings in the wake of anonymous online calls for anti-government protests modeled on demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa.
No major protests have occurred in China following the calls, but the security crackdown they sparked has resulted in the arrest or detention of dozens of public interest lawyers, writers, intellectuals and activists.
China's Communist government allows worship only in state-approved churches, but many Christians belong to unregistered congregations. Such "house churches" are subjected to varying degrees of harassment by authorities.
More than 60 million Christians are believed to worship in China's independent churches, compared with about 20 million who worship in the state church, according to scholars and church activists.
A church member who went to the gathering spot for services and managed to evade police told The Associated Press that about 200 people were taken away and were being held at a local school. Their cellphones were confiscated, said the man, who would give only his English name, Kane, for fear of police reprisals.
An AP videographer saw about a dozen people escorted by police onto an empty city bus and driven away.
Shouwang pastor Yuan Ling said by telephone that he was unable to go to the venue because police had put him under house arrest Saturday night. Yuan said he knew of at least six other church members who were also under house arrest.
Yuan said fellow parishioners also told him that many worshippers were being held at a school in Beijing's Haidian district, though he wasn't sure of the exact number.
Shouwang had been holding services at a Beijing restaurant until they were evicted last week.
Ai Weiwei, an internationally known avant-garde artist who is also an outspoken government critic, became the highest-profile person targeted in the crackdown on dissent when he was detained at a Beijing airport a week ago. The Foreign Ministry says he is being investigated for alleged economic crimes, though Beijing police have yet to confirm he is in custody.
Ai was last seen being led away by police at the airport after being barred from boarding a flight to Hong Kong.
About 50 pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday demanded Ai's release, peacefully chanting "No to political persecution" outside the central Chinese government's liaison office. Opposition legislator Lee Cheuk-yan tossed a picture of Ai into the grounds of the compound.
Former British colony Hong Kong enjoys Western-style civil liberties as part of its special semiautonomous status under Chinese rule.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for Ai's release and criticized China for what she said was a deteriorating human rights situation in the first part of 2011.
Clinton made the remarks while announcing the release of the U.S. State Department's annual assessment of human rights around the world. It said China stepped up restrictions on critics and tightened control of civil society in 2010 by limiting freedom of speech and Internet access.
As it does each year, China fired back with its own report, accusing Washington of hypocrisy and criticizing the U.S. for its own human rights record, citing figures showing high crime, homelessness, racial discrimination, and killings of civilians and other abuses by U.S. forces overseas.
The report pointed to the huge amount of money poured into last year's midterm congressional elections as a perversion of democracy, and accused Washington of advocating Internet freedom to boost its influence over other countries, while at the same time pursuing legal challenges to the WikiLeaks secret-spilling website.
"We hereby advise the U.S. government to take concrete actions to improve its human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs," the report said.
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Associated Press videographer David Wivell in Beijing and AP writer Min Lee in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
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