Kindergarteners and police officers

Classrooms are for learning, not policing.

Have you ever thought about the possibility of your 5 or 6-year-old child’s classroom being searched by police officers because his teacher is a Christian? In restricted nations around the world, this practice is not an oddity, but rather, the norm.

VOM sister-mission China Aid reported on Tuesday that the Public Security Bureau (PSB), accompanied by officials from education bureaus, raided Chinese kindergarten classrooms in Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan.

Sun Haiping, wife of house church pastor Wang Dao, is in charge of the three schools. She is also part of the Chinese delegation, now in Washington, DC, focusing on democracy and religious freedom. Her main purpose as a part of this delegation is to elaborate on the persecution of house churches in Guangzhou.

“If this was a normal school inspection, the PSB would not have been there, and it would have been led by the Education Bureau,” she said on Tuesday. “The schools are at risk of being shut down.”

During the invasions, PSB questioned teachers and children concerning where Sun was, and what her purpose was for traveling to the US. They also asked if the school owned Bibles or distributed them to students.

According to Sun, the schools where raided by police because she is visiting the United States to speak about democracy and religious freedom. Authorities applauded Sun’s generous actions in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, but now she is being targeted for speaking about the freedom and justice that the Chinese constitution promises, but the authorities withhold from citizens.

Please pray that Sun Haiping and Wang Dao will stay strong and faithful and that the children in these schools will be able to continue receiving quality education from these equipped believers.