Nearly 1,000 sect members arrested in crackdown
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 20 August, 2014, 5:01am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 20 August, 2014, 5:01am
Agence France-Presse in Beijing
Sect members allegedly killed a woman in Shandong.
The authorities have arrested nearly 1,000 members of a Christian sect since June after its members were accused of murdering a woman at a McDonald's restaurant the previous month, according to state media.
The suspects are members of The Church of Almighty God, a Christian group that has attracted followers in some rural areas for more than a decade.
The arrested included "high-level organisers and backbone members" of the group, Xinhua said, citing officials.
It did not give details of what crimes the suspects, said to come from more than six provinces, are accused of.
Beijing has for years struggled to suppress the group, with state media reporting the arrest of nearly 1,000 followers in 2012 when the organisation was under the spotlight for predicting an apocalypse.
The group told members at the time that a "female Jesus" had arrived and called on members to overthrow the Communist Party, which it refers to as "the big red dragon", the state-run Global Times reported.
State media reports said the group brainwashed its members and encouraged them to isolate themselves from family and friends.
This year's crackdown follows the murder in May of a woman at a McDonald's in Shandong province. She was attacked because she refused to give sect members her telephone number. Five people would go on trial tomorrow in connection with the murder, Xinhua said.
The movement's founder has reportedly fled to the United States.
The central government tightly controls the exercise of religion, permitting worship at government-controlled Buddhist, Daoist, Muslim, Protestant and Catholic religious centres, but banning other religious organisations. Beijing often proclaims that it grants citizens wide-ranging religious freedoms.
The authorities have previously cracked down harshly on groups it labels as "cults", most notably the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
