California, Canada Covid restrictions compared to those of Chicoms

 Fox News:

The leader of a watchdog group that monitors Christian persecution in China said he's seeing echoes of the Chinese Community Party "playbook" in the U.S., and he's worried it’ll get worse.

Bob Fu, president of the U.S.-based non-governmental organization ChinaAid, said he's seeing the same tactics in Western nations that the CCP uses to crack down on churches.

"The similarities are very, very striking between the Chinese Communist way of persecution and the American leftist way of restriction and even discrimination," Fu told Fox News Digital.

Fu said he has observed with concern how the left in the U.S. is increasingly exhibiting "dictatorial" attitudes both culturally and politically by censoring speech, enforcing "woke" culture and not tolerating dissent. He pinpointed the alleged political weaponziation of federal law enforcement agencies as a worrisome escalation of such trends.
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Fu, who became a naturalized American citizen and attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said some of the tactics used to crack down on churches during the pandemic both in the U.S. and other Western countries were sometimes straight out of the "Chinese Communist playbook."

"They only have one playbook," he said. "I saw the governor of California basically prescribe and order the church to shut down and say not only when they can worship, but how. The ways that he threatened to punish those churches and pastors sometimes were word-for-word exactly the same as what the CCP is using against the Chinese churches."

Fu noted how former Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at one point threatened to cut off the utilities of homes and businesses that defied California's COVID-19 restrictions.

"Guess what? That's exactly the same tactic, word-for-word, that the Communist Party has issued over the years against the churches," Fu claimed. Neither Newsom nor Garcetti responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment by time of publication.

Fu also noted how pastors have been treated in Canada during recent years as a particularly egregious example of Chinese-style tactics being used to clamp down on churches in a Western democracy, adding that the country has been engaging in "passive and active persecution" against churches.

CANADIAN PASTOR ARRESTED SECOND TIME FOR PROTESTING CHILDREN'S DRAG QUEEN EVENTS: ‘SICK, TWISTED PERVERSION’

"In front of the camera, the police would invade a church during the Sunday worship, kick out all the believers and basically push the pastor away from the church building and then shut down the whole church," Fu said of Canada. "So, that is happening now. I think the church in the West has to be prepared for something like this to happen and maybe happen more."

During the pandemic, churches throughout Canada contended with imprisoned pastors, locked facilities, steep fines and continued interference from government officials. After Pastor Tim Stephens of Calgary, Alberta, was arrested for a second time in 2021 when a police helicopter reportedly found his church gathering outside, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote a letter urging the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to consider adding Canada to its watch list.

Pastor Derek Reimer of Calgary remains in prison as of Wednesday after being arrested twice in recent weeks for protesting drag queen story time for children at public libraries. He was most recently charged for allegedly breaching a release order that prohibited him from communicating with self-identified LGBTQ people or being within 200 meters of events involving the LGBTQ community.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski, another Calgary pastor who was repeatedly jailed for keeping his church open during the pandemic, told Fox News Digital last week that Reimer's arrests indicate that authorities are anti-Christian and are beginning to enforce ideology using the same tactics they used to enforce COVID-19 protocols.
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I suspect the authorities think they are doing this for the good of the worshipers, but we are finding that many of these restrictions were totally unnecessary.  No wonder people are leaving places with this kind of control-freak government.