The New York Times

Thursday, October 22, 1999

BEIJING JOURNAL

When Parents Sin (in China's Eyes) Children Suffer

By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING -- With a mother's anger and a mother's fear, Gou Qinghui displayed the empty green folder that is supposed to hold her baby boy's birth certificate.

"It's just so unfair to the child," she said, describing how hospital officials last month handed her the folder without the vital document inside. The officials at the Beijing Medical University No. 3 Hospital told her they could not issue a birth certificate for Xiao Xuya, born on Sept. 3, but they refused to tell her why.

Ms. Gou, 37 and a devout Christian, is pretty certain why. Since she was removed from her teaching post at the government-controlled Yanjing Theological Seminary in 1994, she has thrown herself into the illegal "house church" movement -- Protestants who worship in homes and other locations, rejecting the authority of the official church. She was recently threatened with arrest for her religious work.

On top of that, her husband, Xiao Biguang, also 37 and a Christian, tried in the early 1990s to combine his religious principles with political activism. In 1994, after he helped organize a "China Democratic Alliance," he was arrested and held for three years.

Since his release in 1997, Xiao has stayed clear of politics, he says, but has lived in what the couple refer to as soft imprisonment -- under close police scrutiny and without any identification papers, which means he cannot travel or hold a job.

So both parents are used to living with official intimidation. But even they have been shocked by the crude effort to hold hostage their baby's future.

"What I'm most worried about is getting papers for my child," Ms. Gou said. "If we don't get the right document from the hospital, then we can't go to the police station to register the child and get him listed on our Beijing residence certificate."

"Without documents he won't be able to do anything," she said, drawing the parallel with her husband's current limbo. "He won't be able to go to school, and later on he won't be able to find work."

Xiao added: "Even if the two of us have our backgrounds, that shouldn't threaten our baby. He's an innocent victim."

Over the last month and a half the parents have made repeated inquiries about the birth certificate at the hospital and with the Haidian district police but have been constantly rebuffed, leading them to take the risky step of discussing their problem with a reporter.

Their experience is in some fashion shared by thousands of political and religious dissidents here. Most are largely unknown in China or abroad, and most will never be sent away for long terms in labor camps or prisons. But many -- often without even the pretense of legal procedures -- must endure constant harassment by the local police, including threats to the welfare of their families.

Sometimes a state-owned apartment is taken away, sometimes a job or crucial identification papers. Often the mere threat of such sanctions is enough to keep people quiet.

For this couple, who married in 1991, the hostage birth certificate is the latest in a series of troubles that began with Xiao's 1994 arrest. At the time, Ms. Gou was a Bible teacher at the official seminary in Beijing although, she admits, she also worked "a little" with the house churches.

After her husband's arrest, Ms. Gou was relieved of all duties at the seminary, but continued to draw her salary. "Their attitude was, just take the money and don't bother to come around here," she said.

She has never joined her husband in political activities, she says, although she was detained for hours once in 1995 after she signed a petition calling for a reappraisal of the crushed student democracy movement of 1989.

Forced out of the official seminary, Ms. Gou became more deeply involved with house churches, which are said to meet at hundreds of small sites around Beijing. Adherents say these sites draw far more worshipers than the handful of large official churches, which are crowded by thousands of residents each Sunday. While illegal, most of the meetings are known to the authorities, who keep close watch and sometimes move in to fine or arrest the leaders.

"Most of my work in the movement is as a simple preacher and organizer," Ms. Gou said. By last spring, she was apparently seen as a threat and on April 5, the police came to her house with arrest papers.

But she was more than five months pregnant at the time, and she and her husband argued that she was still a legally approved religious worker, citing her continuing affiliation with the seminary.

The police left. On April 20, the Yanjing Theological Seminary issued a new document, formally expelling her.

"I'm not really a political activist, I'm just interested in spreading the Gospel," Ms. Gou said. With her baby born and her last connection with the official church severed, she does not know if or when those police will return. For now, she just wants her baby to get his papers.