AUTHORITIES in China have arrested about 1,000 people in a crackdown on a Christian sect that spread doomsday rumours and targetted communist rule, state media said Thursday ahead of the supposedly Mayan-foretold apocalypse.
Agency reports indicated that the Christian-inspired group “Almighty God” has been accused of spreading doomsday rumours apparently linked to the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar and urging followers to slay the “red dragon” of communism.
Close to 1,000 followers of the sect, which state-run media labels an “evil cult” – the same description it applies to the banned Falun Gong group – have been held in a nationwide crackdown that began last week, state-run CCTV reported.
However, during the week, fears that the end of the world is near have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of earth.
Ahead of December 21 (today), which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year “Long Count” Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France, believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.
The apocalypse predictions have received widespread coverage in China, thanks in part to the success of the Hollywood disaster film “2012”, which was inspired by the supposed Mayan prophecy.
However, foreign visitors were flocking to a pyramid-shaped mountain in southeastern Serbia, ahead of the Mayan-foretold ‘doomsday’, local officials saidThursday.
Reports stated that hotel beds near Rtanj mountain, had been booked up well in advance, local tourist officials said.
“We have never had foreigners here at this time of the year,” said Marina Zikic of the tourist office in Boljevac, the main town in the area.
Serbia’s Mountain Rescue Services (GSS), a non-profit voluntary association said in a statement that it had sent two teams to Rtanj just in case help was needed.
Meanwhile, a Dutch Christian has painstakingly prepared a lifeboat in his garden capable of saving 50 people ahead of biblical floods he expects to accompany Friday’s Mayan-foretold ‘doomsday.’
“The Mayans weren’t crazy, and if you also look at biblical prophecies, the mountains will melt like wax,” Pieter Frank van der Meer told the left-wing Volkskrant daily yesterday.
A fervent Christian, Van der Meer bought the orange totally enclosed lifeboat for 13,000 euros (around 17,000 dollars) and has installed a toilet, a sink, a child’s car seat and food supplies.
Around 35 people have reserved seats in the Norwegian-built boat, which currently sits in Van der Meer’s garden in the central Netherlands village of Kootwijkerbroek, around 20 kilometres from the sea.
Passengers include his children and grandchildren, Van der Meer told the Dutch Protestant television programme “De Vijfde Dag” (“The Fifth Day”).
However, police in China detained more than 350 Almighty God members in the southwestern province of Guizhou, while in the northwestern province of Qinghai more than 400 were held for “gathering unlawfully”, the Beijing Times reported.
Smaller numbers have been held in other areas across the country.
Almighty God predicts that three days of darkness will begin today, and has called on its members to overthrow China’s ruling Communist Party, which it refers to as “the big red dragon”, the state-run Global Times reported.
It has also told believers that a new era presided over by a “female Jesus” has arrived and that tsunamis and earthquakes will rock the world, the Global Times said.
Chinese state-run media have condemned the group in lurid detail, with the China Youth Daily reporting that Almighty God “even uses ‘sex communication’, calling on female members to use their sex appeal to seduce single men”.
The sect was founded in the early 1990s, but has remained secretive in the face of government intolerance of non-official religious groups.
Group members use pseudonyms such as “Little White Rabbit” or “Doggy” to conceal their identities, and are often not allowed to carry mobile phones or other communication devices, China Business View magazine reported.
China’s Communist Party does not tolerate challenges to its authority and has brutally cracked down on religious groups that refuse to toe the party line, including the Buddhist-inspired Falun Gong, which was banned in the late 1990s.
Authorities were shocked when Falun Gong was able to quietly mass thousands of silent protesters at key symbolic locations including Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and the central leadership compound of Zhongnanhai.
China has a long history of religiously-inspired anti-government movements, most notably the nineteenth century “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom”, led by a Christian convert who gathered millions of followers in an attempt to overthrow the emperor.
Earlier this week, CCTV quoted police in Qinghai as saying their investigation into the Almighty God sect was related to stability maintenance and would be linked to “our anti-self-immolation fight”.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please comments are invited