China Cracking Down Ahead of Olympics

BP Sports is reporting that China seems to be in the midst of a crackdown on Christians before the Olympics.

“We seem to be seeing a crackdown ahead of the Olympics. Whether that’s to send a message to the church to lay low or whether it is to make sure that anybody who might cause international embarrassment is taken care of ahead of time, I don’t know,” Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, told Baptist Press. “But we do see an increase in the level of arrests, the level of house church services being raided, that sort of activity.

“We also have seen a number of foreigners who are Christians who, when the time came to renew their visa they have been denied a new visa and told that they had to leave the country,” Nettleton added. “So it’s happening both amongst the house churches of native Chinese people as well as foreign Christians who are living and working in China. They’re finding that they’re no longer welcome.”