On Jan. 1, more than 10 policemen led by the vice head of the local Public Security Bureau stormed into the home of Lou Yuanqi, one of the house church leaders in Huocheng County in Xinjiang (north-western China), according to information provided by Human Rights in China (HRIC), one of several human rights organizations monitoring persecution of Chinese citizens, including religious minorities.

No great damage was done and the church leader and his wife, present during the raid, are now fine. However, the incident was clearly meant to intimidate Lou as the leader of a house church – an institution detested by the Chinese communist government, according to reports from HRIC.

"Given leadership transition in fall of 2012 we do expect a much harsher year, even more so than 2011, although 2011 already marked the worst in terms of religious freedom, human rights, and rule of law in two decades," Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, told The Christian Post recently.

ChinaAid declared recently that 2011 was the "year of political and religious persecution" in China. One of the reasons for that is the Arab Spring (or the Jasmine Revolution), which moved the state to intensify the crackdown on churches and prominent Christians, which started in 2010 and lasted for the whole of 2011.

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Still, some experts in China are careful about predicting an increase in church persecution in 2012. At least the government will probably not do anything too drastic and attention-grabbing, like raiding several churches at the same time, according to experts.

"Officials want to get promoted in the 18th Party Congress and nobody wants to risk creating a scene in case there are strong reactions from the people," Liang Jinglu, a human rights defender in China, told HRIC recently.

Occasional raids and removing leaders one by one seem to be the technique the government prefers. The state is not going to crack down on house churches in one national raid, Liang told the human rights group. Instead, he believes, it will do so gradually. The authorities will not pursue a harsh crackdown on house churches for fear of a strong reaction, as well as because of the presence of many other social conflicts currently going on in the nation, according to Li Dunyong, a human rights lawyer in Beijing.

Meanwhile, the general outlook for all religions looks quite bleak in China. On Dec. 19, the Minister of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhu Weiqun, published an article titled "Communist Party Member Should not Believe in Religion" in the state's biweekly official journal called Seeking Truth, an HRIC representative told CP.

The article read: "the principled stance regarding forbidding members from believing in religion has been consistent and has not changed an iota," according to a translation provided by HRIC.

It further urged party members "to unite the patriotic religious groups to resist various infiltrations from overseas hostile forces which use religion as a tool."

"Allowing party members to believe in religion would reduce the party's ability to fight separatism particularly under the circumstance where overseas hostile forces are using religion as an approach to perpetrate separatism activities in some minority areas," the article read.

After the Communist victory in 1949, missionaries from the West were expelled from China, but Christianity was permitted in state-sanctioned churches, so long as they gave their primary allegiance to the Communist Party. While unofficial churches have been feeling the pressure from the government as unwanted entities to be brought under control, state-sanctioned churches have reportedly been spreading and overflowing in recent years.

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'Church of God' Pastor Neftali Leiva, a father of five daughters, was gunned down last week near the gathering, said his denomination's territorial administrative bishop, Jose Clara Vela.

He added that the shooting was witnessed by another pastor.

The witnessing pastor was quoted as saying that an unknown assailant walked up to the victim without a word and shot him point blank several times. When the shooter saw the witness a short way down the street, he reportedly also fired three times in his direction.

“The assassin shouted, ‘I’ll kill you,[also]’” the elderly pastor was quoted as saying.

It is the practice in the violent area to leave no witnesses, Christians said.

The pastor apparently felt the bullets go by and impact the trees behind him, but was unhurt."God’s hand of protection covered me, and the man ran away,” added the unidentified pastor, who is reportedly involved in a new Church of God church just across the border in Mexico.

World Missions, a mission group supporting indigenous Christians, said it has set up a relief fund to help care for the murdered pastor's widow and children.

The border territory where the attack took place is only about 48 kilometers (30 miles) long, but is home to 73 Church of God congregations, Christians said.

Clara explained that 20 new churches were "planted" in the region in the last two years.

However he stressed that the latest killing underscores that the church is growing in an area suffering of violence caused by drug distribution and transit. “When we travel in the area, we go with the car windows down so people will see who we are and not confuse us with their enemies,” the overseer said in published remarks.

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It was not clear what prompted the killing and local authorities could not be reached for comment.

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The activists added that their situation is “even worse under the rule of the military junta.”

The activist demanded, during a conference on the “situation and state of Copts after the revolution,” freedom from the grip of the Church, which,according to them, fell in the “trap of the military council and continued its wrong path in political life and caused the election to turn into a sectarian issue.”

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Prominent activist Naguib Gobraiel said “Copts must unite in one party, as the military junta did not offer anything for the Copts.”

He added that “We [Copts] shall make the Party a political bloc, not religious.”

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824 of 1,835 precincts - 45 percent

x-Mitt Romney, 7,089 - 43 percent
Newt Gingrich, 4,323 - 26 percent
Ron Paul, 3,061 - 18 percent
Rick Santorum, 2,157 - 13 percent