Church of Almighty God Refugees Asylum Claims. 4. How Do You Prove to Be a CAG Member?

While accusations that CAG “commits crimes” have become less fashionable, asylum claims are still rejected when the authorities are not persuaded the refugee is “really” a member of the church.

By Massimo Introvigne

January 28, 2025

Article 4 of 9. Read article 1, article 2, and article 3.

CAG refugees in Italy performing in Torino, May 2024.

Only a minority of decisions about asylum, particularly in the last few years, accept the Chinese narrative that the CAG is a violent “cult,” mentioning the McDonald’s murder, and accusations that CAG members violently attacked other Christians and promoted riots while allegedly waiting for the end of the world in 2012. All the most recent COI follow the opinion of virtually all scholars who have studied the CAG, that these crimes are largely imaginary. They are fake news created by Chinese propaganda to justify the persecution. However, China still spreads the fake news and recently has also mobilized Christian anti-cultists from Korea who tour Western countries repeating the same propaganda.

Theoretically, authorities in democratic countries may still believe that some CAG members committed crimes, and grant asylum to those who obviously did not. However, if the administrative authority or the court believes in the description of CAG as a violent and even murderous “cult,” the applicants’ stories may be declared not credible when they defend their church and deny that the crimes were committed by co-religionists. Happily, the “criminal group” argument appears to be losing momentum, although Chinese embassies work to perpetuate it.

Assuming that the immigration authority or the court rely on updated COI, and are prepared to assume that active CAG members identified as such are persecuted in China, the applicant’s journey does not end. The authorities should still be satisfied that the applicant is a bona fide CAG member.

Indeed, it is possible that economic immigrants would falsely claim to be CAG members to obtain asylum. On January 11, 2021, a South Korean lawyer was convicted for forging documents to falsely claim that his clients were members of either the CAG or Falun Gong.

Anti-cultists in Korea who regularly cooperate with the CCP to attack CAG refugees and media in China used the incident to claim that CAG refugees rely on rogue lawyers. In fact, the convicted lawyer never represented CAG. We did interview lawyers representing the real CAG asylum seekers in South Korea, who explained that none of the convicted lawyer’s clients were genuine CAG members. The lawyer had simply forged evidence to pretend that they were CAG (or Falun Gong) devotees, but they were not.

One of the authors, Massimo Introvigne, with CAG refugees in Seoul, South Korea, in 2017.

But how does an applicant prove that s/he is a real CAG member? S/he can describe the theology and activities of the CAG, which the authorities will compare with the COI available to them. In some earlier cases, the refugees presented CAG theology and practices in what would have looked like an unimpeachable narrative to scholars who had studied the CAG. Unfortunately, the authorities compared what the refugees were saying with outdated or wrong COI (such as the one prepared by DIDR in 2016 in France). While the refugees were right and the COI were wrong, the authorities decided to believe the COI rather than the asylum seekers, concluding they did not know their own religion and were likely false CAG members. Fortunately, better COI gradually emerged, and in France, for example, several cases where the applications had been rejected based on the old 2016 DIDR COI were overturned on appeal.

Administrative authorities and courts sometimes still object that knowledge of CAG theology may come from CAG’s and other websites, and does not prove that the applicant is a genuine CAG member. In most cases, applicants file a declaration by CAG organizations or leaders in the diaspora confirming that they are CAG members in good standing. Originally, all such requests were centralized to the CAG church in New York, whose leaders signed the statements. To overcome the objection that leaders in New York may have never met (or only online) refugees in Italy, France, Australia, or other countries, more recently the statements are signed by local CAG leaders in the respective countries, who may also offer their availability as witnesses.

A CAG refugee in Italy at the Turin 2024 event.

While some negative decisions still claim that these statements are generic or repetitious, the Justice Court of Rome based an interesting decision of February 21, 2020 on the oral testimony of the president of the CAG’s legal entity in Italy. She explained that she does not sign statements confirming that a refugee is a genuine CAG member lightly. First, they are based on interviews with the refugee when, upon arrival in Italy, s/he first contacts the Church. Questions asked in the interviews focus on details one would not be able to learn from Internet sources and without having really participated in CAG activities in China. Second, the refugee should explain what local community s/he attended in China, and the CAG has ways to contact Chinese local leaders, and co-religionists from the same local church who may have already escaped abroad. The combination of these two tests allows the local leaders in the diaspora to certify in good conscience that the refugee is a CAG member.

In a handful of cases, the applicants had converted to the CAG after having left China, often from another Christian group. These are called sur place conversions, and generate refugee claims that are more difficult to assess. It is possible that the conversion was self-serving, and only aimed at obtaining asylum. In these cases, the local leaders can only testify that the applicant is regularly and, as far as they understand, sincerely participating in CAG activities abroad. In several countries, even in these cases asylum is normally granted if the applicant can prove that his or her visibility in the host country as a CAG member had probably alerted Chinese authorities, which would lead to an arrest in case s/he will return to China.

Source: bitterwinter.org