China cult pair executed for McDonald’s killing
BEIJING: A father and daughter who belonged to a fringe Chinese religious group were executed yesterday for beating a woman to death at a McDonald’s restaurant, reportedly after she rebuffed their attempts to recruit her. The pair were among a group of five members of the banned Quannengshen cult convicted of attacking the woman, surnamed Wu, after she refused to give them her phone number.
“For the crimes of intentional homicide, and organizing an evil cult to undermine the law, Zhang Fan and Zhang Lidong were put to death,” the Intermediate People’s Court of Yantai city said on its official microblog account. China uses both lethal injection and shooting for executions, but the method was not specified. Zhang Fan was previously said by state media to be Zhang Lidong’s daughter. Followers of Quannengshen, whose name can be translated as Church of Almighty God, believe that Jesus has been reincarnated as a Chinese woman. They refer to the ruling Communist Party as the “great red dragon”. On its website-where one section is headed “The Maturer the People Become, the Sooner the Great Red Dragon Will Collapse”-the group describes the authorities as “the persecutor of God and the enemy of God”.
The organization was outlawed by the government in the mid-1990s and its founders moved to the United States in 2000, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Shortly after the May incident, an online video emerged showing a man resembling Zhang Lidong striking out angrily with a pole, shouting “Damn you, devil! Go to hell!” as a woman yelled “Kill her! Beat her to death!” The three minutes of footage, apparently shot on a mobile phone at the McDonald’s in the eastern province of Shandong, only included a fraction of a second showing the person thought to be the victim. The three others convicted over the attackincluding another daughter of Zhang Lidong’swere given prison terms ranging from seven years to life. State media gave the executions prominent coverage yesterday, with broadcaster CCTV showing footage of the convicts in court as well as replaying the attack film.—AFP