About 1,000 suspected members of a Christian sect have been arrested in a crackdown against the group which China considers a “cult”, state media said on Tuesday.
The detained people of the sect “Almighty God”, who believed those who resisted their campaign to join their cult as “demons”, were involved in over 500 cases.
The scale of the crackdown is similar to the one against the ‘Falun Gong’ spiritual group which became very popular in China over a decade ago, before it was banned.
Among the arrested are nearly a hundred “high-level organisers and backbone members”, China’s Ministry of Public Security said, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.
Five members of the cult have been charged with the killing of a woman at a McDonald’s outlet in eastern Shandong Province on May 28, when she refused to give them her phone number, allegedly as they tried to recruit new members.
The five will stand trial on August 21 at Yantai Intermediate People’s Court in Shandong.
A recent report on the group by the BBC stated that it claimed millions of members. The report said one of the prime accused in the Shandong murder case Zhang lidong, showed no remorse or fear.
“I beat her (victim) with all my might and stamped on her too. She was a demon. We had to destroy her,” it quoted him as saying.