BEIJING (AP) - Police have released 47 Chinese Christians detained at a prayer service last week while President Bush was visiting Beijing, one of the Christians said Monday.
Police raided the service Thursday at a private retirement home financed by donations from Chinese Christians. The detainees were released Friday, but 15 were picked up again and held until Saturday, said Liu Fenggang, a Christian active in the underground Protestant church.
The raid came the day Bush arrived for a two-day visit to Beijing. Liu said it might have resulted from heightened surveillance of Christian activists during the trip.
Bush appealed publicly during the visit for China to lift its restrictions on religious activity.
China allows only state-monitored worship and is cracking down on independent religious groups that the Communist Party sees as a threat to its monopoly on power. Some have attracted millions of followers.
In December, three leaders of an independent Protestant church in southern China were sentenced to death on charges of violating anti-cult laws and on rape and assault charges that their followers say are fabricated.
In the raid Thursday in Beijing, police seized Bibles, mobile phones and tape players, Liu said in a telephone interview.
Detainees were forbidden to drink water or use the bathroom for much of their confinement, causing one to suffer an irregular heartbeat and be sent to hospital, he said.
All were repeatedly interrogated, according to Liu, who said he has been detained many times and spent two years in a labor camp.
"They claimed we were holding an illegal meeting, but we said we were only exercising our right to freedom of faith," said Liu.
Police ordered the closure of the retirement home and the removal of its 12 residents, Christians mostly in their 90s. The owners were order to pay a $6,100 fine and hand over the property.
But a deadline to close the facility passed Sunday without police action, said the home's co-owner, Yang Guizhi.
The Vatican said this month that 53 Chinese bishops and priests were either detained or kept under surveillance and forbidden to worship.
Asked about the report during a joint news conference Thursday with Bush, President Jiang Zemin said China protected religious freedom. He said people were detained only for breaking the law, not for religious activities.