Anti-Catholic League: Difference between revisions

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At its height in 1994, the ACL claimed it could put millions on the streets and boasted a membership in the hundreds of thousands. [[Chul Lung Qua]] made regular appearances in state television and was frequently invited to rallies by PCD politicians. Blockading and picketing Catholic shops, pelting churches with eggs and paint while police looked on impassively, the ACL felt stronger than ever. Little did its leaders know the League had been instrumentalized by the Party, with much of its mobilization power actually provided by government agencies and with its finances buoyed by shady PCD funds. The Party had decided to do away with religion altogether and the loudness of the League was one of the tools used to make it seem unavoidable and necessary. During the Great Summer March, the ACL made a big spectacle of sending a delegation to the People's Assembly to present a legislative initiative that would ban all religious practice. With the Party graciously accepting the will of the masses and duly voting it through, the text having been redacted in the offices of the Ministry of Interior all along, the League made itself redundant.

===Decline===

The passage of the Religious Law of 94 was the crowning achievement of the ACL and also its death knell. Within months, the ACL would begin to see its public activities severely constrained. Permits for public acts stopped being approved, audits began raining from the tax authorities, activists soon found themselves being clobbered and arrested on the streets by especially vicious police officers. As the crackdown intensified, ACL President [[Chul Lung Qua]] was forced to appear on national television and denounce his own organization for excesses and mistakes committed, in the first instance of nationally televised self-criticism. Shortly after and under threat of arrest, Qua would be forced to resign from the ACL although he kept his Party membership.

The passage of the Religious Law of 94 was the crowning achievement of the ACL and also its death knell. Within months, the ACL would begin to see its public activities severely constrained. Attempts by the ACL to help enforce the new law were fiercely rebuffed. Permits for public acts stopped being approved, audits began raining down from the tax authorities, activists soon found themselves being clobbered and arrested on the streets by especially vicious police officers. As the crackdown intensified, ACL President [[Chul Lung Qua]] was forced to appear on national television and denounce his own organization for excesses and mistakes committed, in the first instance of nationally televised self-criticism. Shortly after and under threat of arrest, a humiliated Qua would be forced to resign from the ACL, although he kept his Party membership. In his place was put a complete unknown bureaucrat by the name of Barbas Chang who would massively wind down the ACL's organizational structure and size.

==Activities==

==Leaders==

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 At its height in 1994, the ACL claimed it could put millions on the streets and boasted a membership in the hundreds of thousands. [[Chul Lung Qua]] made regular appearances in state television and was frequently invited to rallies by PCD politicians. Blockading and picketing Catholic shops, pelting churches with eggs and paint while police looked on impassively, the ACL felt stronger than ever. Little did its leaders know the League had been instrumentalized by the Party, with much of its mobilization power actually provided by government agencies and with its finances buoyed by shady PCD funds. The Party had decided to do away with religion altogether and the loudness of the League was one of the tools used to make it seem unavoidable and necessary. During the Great Summer March, the ACL made a big spectacle of sending a delegation to the People's Assembly to present a legislative initiative that would ban all religious practice. With the Party graciously accepting the will of the masses and duly voting it through, the text having been redacted in the offices of the Ministry of Interior all along, the League made itself redundant.
 ===Decline===
-The passage of the Religious Law of 94 was the crowning achievement of the ACL and also its death knell. Within months, the ACL would begin to see its public activities severely constrained. Permits for public acts stopped being approved, audits began raining from the tax authorities, activists soon found themselves being clobbered and arrested on the streets by especially vicious police officers. As the crackdown intensified, ACL President [[Chul Lung Qua]] was forced to appear on national television and denounce his own organization for excesses and mistakes committed, in the first instance of nationally televised self-criticism. Shortly after and under threat of arrest, Qua would be forced to resign from the ACL although he kept his Party membership.
+The passage of the Religious Law of 94 was the crowning achievement of the ACL and also its death knell. Within months, the ACL would begin to see its public activities severely constrained. Attempts by the ACL to help enforce the new law were fiercely rebuffed. Permits for public acts stopped being approved, audits began raining down from the tax authorities, activists soon found themselves being clobbered and arrested on the streets by especially vicious police officers. As the crackdown intensified, ACL President [[Chul Lung Qua]] was forced to appear on national television and denounce his own organization for excesses and mistakes committed, in the first instance of nationally televised self-criticism. Shortly after and under threat of arrest, a humiliated Qua would be forced to resign from the ACL, although he kept his Party membership. In his place was put a complete unknown bureaucrat by the name of Barbas Chang who would massively wind down the ACL's organizational structure and size.
 ==Activities==
 ==Leaders==

Anti-Catholic League: Difference between revisions

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