- More than 60 asylum-seeking members of a Chinese Christian church were detained last week in Thailand but are now continuing on to the US
- The group left Thailand on the night of April 6, said a colonel in Thailand’s police immigration division
- Thai police said the 63 members of the church, who have been in Thailand since September, would be deported within a week to a third country
BANGKOK, Thailand: More than 60 asylum-seeking members of a Chinese Christian church, the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, were detained last week in Thailand but are now continuing on to the US.
The group left Thailand on the night of April 6, said a colonel in Thailand’s police immigration division.
One day earlier, Thai police said the 63 members of the church, who have been in Thailand since September, would be deported within a week to a third country.
The US Embassy, which was working with representatives of the UN Refugee Agency in talks with Thai officials about the group, has not responded to request for comment.
Before being taken to Bangkok to be detained in immigration facilities, the church members were arrested last week in the seaside city of Pattaya for overstaying their visas.
The group was heading to the US and is expected to arrive in Dallas, Texas, said Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, a Texas-based Christian human rights organization.
“ChinaAid welcomes the landing of the persecuted Chinese ‘Mayflower Church’ to freedom in America and welcome to Texas. We will not rest until religious freedom is fully realized in China,” he said.
Prior to their arrival in Thailand, the church members, who said they faced unbearable harassment in China, fled to South Korea’s Jeju island in October 2019, and stayed there for nearly three years.
