BEIJING (AP) — A court in China sentenced the leader of a banned Christian sect to death today, a human rights group said.

The founder of the South China Church, Gong Shengliang, was convicted by the Jingmen City Intermediate Court on charges including "using a cult to undermine the enforcement of the law," the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The church is banned by the government as cult.

Gong's niece Li Ying, also a church leader, was given a death sentence suspended for two years, the centre said. Such sentences are usually commuted to life in prison.
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Gong established the church as a splinter sect of another Christian group, the Total Scope Church, the centre said. Such groups typically espouse a fundamentalist, evangelical brand of Christianity and operate in defiance of laws requiring Protestants to worship only in the state-controlled nondenominational church.

The church grew over a decade and has 50,000 members spread through some 10 provinces in eastern and central China, the centre said. China's Bureau of State Security arrested Gong and the others in April after labelling the church a cult, part of an ongoing campaign against the better-known Falun Gong spiritual sect and other groups seen as challenging the Communist Party's political monopoly.

At a secret trial on Dec. 18, Gong was also convicted of complicity in rape and injuring 14 people during church rituals, the centre said. Li was convicted of conspiring with Gong in the church and causing intentional injury it said.
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