Chinese authorities have been accused of an anti-Christian crackdown after ripping down a church in ‘the Jerusalem of the East’.
The nation’s Communist party keeps a tight grip on religion, fearing challenges to its authority, but allows worship at state-controlled churches.
Thousands of protesters have spent weeks as a human shield around the Protestant Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, south east China, after officials claimed it was four times the permitted size.
Last week, the church’s leaders reportedly struck a deal with the government to save the building, completed in 2013.
But today four excavators were sent to demolish the symbolic landmark.
It is one of 10 planned demolitions in the region, which has become a stronghold for the marginalised religion.
Christians blasted the move as a ‘barbaric campaign’ by Communist leaders to suppress their culture.