Photo: Jonathan, Samuel, Joyce, and Dorcas of the Mayflower Church. (Freedom Seekers International)
(ChinaAid—March 3, 2023) More than 60 members of the exiled Mayflower Church received tremendous support from churches in Texas. The members of the Christian house church from Shenzhen have been adopted by the East Texas churches, but 10 more families still need resettlement sponsors.
Deana Brown, founder and CEO of Freedom Seekers International (FSI), partnered with Bob Fu and ChinaAid to resettle these Christians who fear repatriation back to China.
Persecution in China
The “Mayflower Church” was established in 2012 as Shenzhen Holy Reformed. Due to Pastor Pan Yongguang’s ordination in the United States, police interrogated him about his connection to overseas groups.
In 2019, millions of people in Hong Kong took to the streets to protest, indirectly triggering the high alert of Shenzhen authorities. Although the church members did not participate in the Hong Kong protests, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are a stone’s throw away from each other. Therefore, the church faced tremendous pressure, and church members voted en masse to flee China after being repeatedly threatened and interrogated by police.
Dangers of their escape
They first sought asylum on Jeju Island in South Korea. After being denied asylum and exhausting all possible immigration avenues, they relocated to Thailand on tourist visas, but the Thai government refused to extend their visas.
The church reported that they were harassed and threatened with kidnapping by Chinese agents in Thailand. When they went to restaurants, they found strangers filming them with mobile phones. Exiled Mayflower congregants suspected these individuals to be Chinese overseas national security personnel.
Processing their refugee status
Church members are currently applying for refugee status with the United Nations, but none of them have received approval yet from the office in Thailand. “So far, only two of the 16 families have been granted a second refugee determination interview with the U.N.,” said Brown of FSI in an interview with Baptist Standard.
Support for the exiled Mayflower Church
Currently, Texas Baptist congregations have pledged to sponsor these exiled Christians, including First Baptist Church and Tyler’s South Spring Baptist Church. Other East Texas churches committed their support: Flint Baptist Church, Sylvania Church in Tyler, Grace Community Church, and Rose Heights Church.
Members of Green Acres Baptist Church and South Spring Baptist Church in Tyler traveled to Thailand. Working with FSI’s ambassador program, they visited the members of the Mayflower.
US Government
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, recently sent a letter to Rashad Hussain, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, and Julieta Valls Noyes, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Immigration, on behalf of the Mayflower church.
He urged Hussain and Noyes to “work to ensure prompt assessment and status determination for those connected to the Mayflower Church seeking protection as refugees.”
McCaul also asked that the issue be raised with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and that the international agency “condemn the Chinese government’s transnational repression.”
Other organizations
Other organizations advocating for the Mayflower Church, including 21Wilberforce, are also exploring the option of securing humanitarian parole from the United States as a temporary measure until they can be granted asylum or another permanent legal status.
In early January, President Joe Biden announced the United States is expanding the humanitarian parole process already in effect for Venezuela and Ukraine to allow up to 30,000 nationals per month from Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba. However, persecuted religious minorities in China were not included.
Portions of this report took references and information from the Baptist Standard.
~Gao Zhensai, Special Correspondent of ChinaAid