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Communism and religious persecution (view source)
Revision as of 05:26, May 7, 2016
, 05:26, May 7, 2016→Atheistic communism and the torture of religious adherents
*Siemon-Netto, Uwe (May 7, 2003). [http://northkoreanchristians.com/chinese-atrocities.html "North Korean and Chinese atrocities against Christians worsen"]. NewsMax. NorthKoreanChristians.com </ref>
*Siemon-Netto, Uwe (May 7, 2003). [http://northkoreanchristians.com/chinese-atrocities.html "North Korean and Chinese atrocities against Christians worsen"]. NewsMax. NorthKoreanChristians.com </ref>
== Atheistic communism and the torture of religious adherents ==
''See also:'' [[Atheistic communism and torture]]
''See also:'' [[Atheistic communism and torture]]
{{cquote|Significantly, communists did not merely try to block or halt religious faith but to reverse it. This was particularly true for [[Romania]], even before the Nicolai Ceausescu era. This meant not just forbidding religious practice and jailing ministers and believers but employing torture to force them to renounce their faith. It was not enough to contain, silence, even punish believers in prison; it was decided they must be tortured in truly unimaginably degrading ways to attempt to undo religious faith.<ref>[http://victimsofcommunism.org/the-war-on-religion/ The War on religion]</ref>}}
{{cquote|Significantly, communists did not merely try to block or halt religious faith but to reverse it. This was particularly true for [[Romania]], even before the Nicolai Ceausescu era. This meant not just forbidding religious practice and jailing ministers and believers but employing torture to force them to renounce their faith. It was not enough to contain, silence, even punish believers in prison; it was decided they must be tortured in truly unimaginably degrading ways to attempt to undo religious faith.<ref>[http://victimsofcommunism.org/the-war-on-religion/ The War on religion]</ref>}}
For more information, please see: [[Atheistic communism and torture]]
Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor of the Underground Church, wrote in his book ''Tortured for Christ'':
{{cquote|I worked in both an official and underground manner until February 29,1948....On that Sunday, on my way to church, I was kidnapped from the street by the secret police....A van of the secret police stopped in front of me, four men jumped out and pushed me into the van. I was taken away for many years.
For over eight years, no one knew if I was alive or dead. My wife was visited by the secret police who posed as released fellow-prisoners. They told her they had attended my burial. She was heart-broken.
Thousands from churches of all denominations went to prison at that time. Not only were clergymen put in jail, but also simple peasants, young boys and girls who witnessed for their faith. The prisons were full and in Rumania, as in all communist countries, to be in prison means to be tortured....
A pastor by the name of Florescu was tortured with red-hot iron pokers and with knives. He was beaten very badly. Then starving rats were driven into his cell through a large pipe. He could not sleep.... If he rested a moment, the rats would attack him....
The communists wished to compel him to betray his brethren, but he resisted steadfastly. In the end, they brought his fourteen year-old son and began to whip the boy in front of his father, saying that they would continue to beat him until the pastor said what they wished him to say....When he could not stand it any more, he cried to his son; 'Alexander, I must say what they want! I can’t bear your beating any more.
The son answered, 'Father, don’t do me the injustice to have a traitor as a parent. Withstand!...'
The communists, enraged, fell upon the child and beat him to death, with blood spattered over the walls of the cell. He died praising God....
Handcuffs which had sharp nails on the insides were put on our wrists. If we were totally still, they didn’t cut us. But in bitterly cold cells, when we shook with cold, our wrists would be torn by the nails.
Christians were hung upside down on ropes and beaten so severely that their bodies swung back and forth under the blows. Christians were put in ice-box 'refrigerator cells' which were so cold, frost and ice covered the inside...
We Christians were put in wooden boxes only slightly larger than we were. ... Dozens of sharp nails were driven into every side of the box, with their razor-sharp points sticking into the box....
I have seen communists torturing Christians and the faces of the torturers shone with rapturous joy. They cried out while torturing the Christians, 'We are the devil.'
'We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of evil.' We saw that communism is not from men but from the devil. It is a spiritual force...of evil—and can only be countered by a greater spiritual force, the Spirit of God.
I often asked the torturers, “Don’t you have pity in your hearts?” They usually answered with a quotation from Lenin that “you cannot make omelets without breaking the shells of eggs”...
I have testified before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate. There I described awful things, such as Christians tied to crosses for four days and nights. The crosses were put on the floor and hundreds of prisoners had to fulfill their bodily necessities over the faces and bodies of the crucified ones. Then the crosses were erected again and the communists jeered and mocked...<ref>[http://www.crossroad.to/heaven/Excerpts/books/faith_under_fire/wurmbrand-tortured.htm Tortured for Christ - excerpt from Chapter 2, by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, founder of Voice of the Martyrs]</ref>}}
== Torture in the Soviet Union ==
[[Image:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|right|235px|thumb|[[Joseph Stalin]], the Premier of the [[Soviet Union]] from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953, patronised the [[League of Militant Atheists]], whose chief aim, under the leadership of Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, was to propagate [[militant atheism]] and eradicate [[religion]].<ref name=Hesemann-Strieber>{{cite book|author=Michael Hesemann, Whitley Strieber|title=The Fatima Secret|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=tx-BEpkJBq8C&pg=PT107&dq=Joseph+Stalin+militant+atheism&hl=en&ei=-DeRTpLrJoPi0QHo88wi&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=Joseph%20Stalin%20militant%20atheism&f=false|quote=Lenin's death in 1924 was followed by the rise of Joseph Stalin, "the man of steel," who founded the "Union of Militant Atheists," whose chief aim was to spread atheism and eradicate religion. In the following years it devastated hundreds of churches, destroyed old icons and relics, and persecuted the clergy with unimaginable brutality.|publisher=Random House Digital, Inc.|date=2000|accessdate=09 October 2011}}</ref><ref name=Steeves>{{cite book|author=Paul D. Steeves|title=Keeping the faiths: religion and ideology in the Soviet Union|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=l7soAAAAYAAJ&q=%22When+a+priest+is+deprived+of+his+congregation,+that+does+not%22&dq=%22When+a+priest+is+deprived+of+his+congregation,+that+does+not%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_ijVUemwOoXRyQGqkICwBA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ|quote=The League of Militant Atheists was formed in 1926 and by 1930 had recruited three million members. Five years later there were 50,000 local groups affiliated to the League and the nominal membership had risen to five million. Children from 8-14 years of age were enrolled in Groups of Godless Youth, and the League of Communist Youth (Komsomol) took a vigorous anti- religious line. Several antireligious museums were opened in former churches and a number of Chairs of Atheism were established in Soviet universities. Prizes were offered for the best 'Godless hymns' and for alternative versions of the Bible from which ... the leader of the League of Militant Atheists, Yemelian Yaroslavsky, said: "When a priest is deprived of his congregation, that does not mean that he stops being a priest. He changes into an itinerant priest. He travels around with his primitive tools in the villages, performs religious rites, reads prayers, baptizes children. Such wandering priests are at times more dangerous than those who carry on their work at a designated place of residence." The intensified persecution, which was a part of the general terror inflicted upon Soviet society by Stalin's policy, ...|publisher=Holmes & Meier|date=1989|accessdate=04 July 2013}}</ref>]]
In the atheistic [[communism|communist]] regime of the [[Soviet Union]], torture was frequently employed to extract false confessions which were subsequently used to establish that individuals were "enemies of the people" - particularly under the [[Militant atheism|militant atheist]] [[Joseph Stalin]]'s regime.<ref>[[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]]. "The Gulag Archipelago"</ref>
In the Soviet Union, many [[Orthodox Christianity|Orthodox]] priests and laymen experienced religious persecution in the form of torture and being sent to prison camps, [[Atheism and forced labor|labor camps]] or mental hospitals.<ref name="ReferenceA">Father Arseny 1893-1973 Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father. Introduction pg. vi - 1. St Vladimir's Seminary Press ISBN 0-88141-180-9</ref><ref name="lalex">''[[Lyudmila Alexeyeva|L.Alexeeva]], History of dissident movement in the USSR, Memorial society, in Russian''</ref><ref name="gins">[http://www.index.org.ru/journal/11/ginzburg.html A.Ginzbourg, "Only one year", "Index" Magazine, in Russian]</ref><ref name="washingtonpost.com">The Washington Post Anti-Communist Priest Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page C09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500783.html</ref>
== Atheistic, Chinese communism and torture ==
The Chinese communist regime has used beatings, harassment and torture to suppress religion in China and continues to use these practices.<ref name="Amnesty1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.refworld.org/docid/3b83b6e00.html |title=China: The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called "heretical organizations"|date=23 March 2000|publisher=Amnesty International|accessdate=17 March 2010}}</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AESx5u6yMw Militant Atheist extremist regime persecuting and torturing Christians in China]</ref>
== Atheistic communist North Vietnam and torture ==
From 1961 to 1973, the North Vietnamese government and Vietcong held hundreds of Americans soldiers captive. Hanoi's Ministry of Public Security's Medical Office (MPSMO) was responsible for "preparing studies and performing research on the most effective Soviet, French, Communist Chinese and other ...techniques..." of extracting information from POWs. The MPSMO "...supervised the use of torture and the use of drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate." Its role also "...included working with Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence advisors who were qualified in the use of medical techniques for intelligence purposes."<ref>[http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/warcrimes.cuba.vietnam.html "War Crimes: The Cuban-Vietnam Connection"], National Alliance of Families.</ref>
== North Korean communism and torture ==
''See also:'' [[Atheism and cannibalism]]
[[North Korea]] is an [[state atheism|atheist state]] where public displays of religion are discouraged.<ref>Elizabeth Raum. ''North Korea''. Series: ''Countries Around the World''. Heinemann, 2012. ISBN 1432961330. p. 28: «North Korea is an atheist state. This means that people do not pray in public or attend places of worship. Buddhist temples exist from earlier times. They are now preserved as historic buildings, but they are not used for worship. A few Christian churches exist, but few people attend services. North Koreans do not celebrate religious holidays.»</ref>
The ''Christian Post'' published an article entitled ''North Korean Defector Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Camp Details Hunger, Torture, and Cannibalism in the DPRK'' which stated:
{{cquote|More than 200,000 North Koreans, including children, are imprisoned in camps where many perish from forced labor, inadequate food, and abuse by guards, according to Human Rights Watch. The isolated, secretive nation has no media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom, and pervasive problems include arbitrary arrest, lack of due process, and torture.<ref>[http://www.christianpost.com/news/north-korean-defector-who-spent-28-years-in-prison-camp-details-starvation-torture-and-cannibalism-in-the-dprk-138746/ ''North Korean Defector Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Camp Details Hunger, Torture, and Cannibalism in the DPRK'']</ref>}}
== Atheistic communist regimes and forced labor ==
== Atheistic communist regimes and forced labor ==