WASHINGTON, USA - President Bush has taken a personal interest in China's detention of a Hong Kong trader who transported bibles into China and ordered U.S. diplomats to take up his case, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Monday.
Boucher was referring to the case of Li Guangqiang, who has received an ``evil cult'' indictment that could lead to the death penalty, a Hong Kong rights group said Jan. 5.
Boucher only referred to reports of Li's detention, saying ''The president is deeply concerned about these reports. The president has asked the State Department to look into this matter.''
He said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing had raised the case with China's foreign ministry on Monday and similar contact had been made with Beijing's embassy by the State Department in Washington.
``Reports of a crackdown on religious practitioners in China are deeply troubling. We call upon China as a member of the international community to meet international standards on the freedom of religious expression and freedom of conscience,'' he added.
He also noted Bush had expressed concerns about religious freedom to the communist giant's leaders, including at an APEC summit in Shanghai in October.
In April and May of 2000, Li took 33,000 bibles in two lots into China's Fujian province to supply an underground Christian group called the Shouter's sect, Hong Kong's Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement Saturday.
It said a court in the city of Fu Qing had said the Hong Kong trader ``used an evil cult to damage a law-based society'' and added that the reference to an ``evil cult'' meant he could be sentenced to death.