suffered a heart attack because of his prison situation.
Activists of the Voice Of the Martyrs (VOM) group in China told BosNewsLife in a statement that Pastor Liu Fenggang: was arrested in October of 2003 and remained in prison until February 2007 on charges of "leaking state secrets". However "soon after being released he suffered a heart attack resulting from lack of treatment of his heart condition in prison," VOM added.
Shorty after his release however, the pastor was put under house arrest on May 15, after he was "stopped, assaulted: and briefly held at a police station. The other Christian held under house arrest is Gao Zhisheng, described by VOM as "China’s hero of 2005," who it said has been facing persecution because of his involvement in religious rights issues, the group said. As a lawyer he was involved in "defending important cases, including the prominent case of Beijing house church leader Pastor Cai Zhuohua," VOM said.
PUBLISHING REPORTS
He also published reports and open letters over alleged abuses of religious and other freedoms, including the reported mistreatment of Christians in Xinjiang. VOM said it was also concerned about the fate of Xu Yong Hai, who worked as a doctor at a hospital in Beijing. He was sentenced to a three-year jail term in 2003 for revealing information about alleged cases of suppression by the Communist regime on Christian family churches. He is currently under house arrest.
"These three faithful Christian men have been persecuted for their bold stand for Christ and for other Christians," VOM said. It told BosNewsLife that it had asked supporters to "hold these men and their families in prayer." VOM workers in the region are assisting the Christians, the group said.
Chinese authorities have strongly denied human rights abuses and say Christians are free to worship within the government-controlled churches. However most of China’s Christians, perhaps 130 million according to some estimates, prefer to gather in what are known as underground ‘house churches’ as they are mainly organized in homes of individual believers.
