• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / China / News China

20 Bitter Winter Reporters Vanished in the Air

12/11/2019Marco Respinti |

Writing for Bitter Winter is a crime in China. 45 of our reporters were arrested. 20 are still in custody but we don’t know where – actually, we cannot even confirm they are alive.

prison cell block
Credits

by Marco Respinti 

From August to December 2018, 45 Bitter Winter’s contributors have been arrested in China for reporting the truth on religious persecution and the harsh harassment of ethnic minorities. Mainline media around the world have covered this blatant violation of human rights and freedom of the press.

Bitter Winter updated its readers on the fate of those 45 in February this year and again in June. A good half of them had been released, but kept under surveillance. The others remained in jail. One year after the arrests, it is now time for a new update.

20 out of 45 are still held in custody in China. 18 are incarcerated in Xinjiang, a vast territory that the CCP is transforming into an archipelago of detention facilities. Even citizens who are still not detained are systematically controlled through high-tech tools.

We have some new information on only one of those 18. He was transferred to a transformation through education camp in Hami city after one year of detention. Nothing is known of the remaining 17. Xinjiang is in fact an off-limits territory, as Bitter Winter readers know all too well, and obtaining information on those detained there is almost impossible.

We have news of one of the reporters who was released. He is one of the four people who were arrested last year in the Shanxi province, in the north of China. He has been subjected to more than six months in jail “on suspicion of illegally providing state secrets overseas,” which in the Orwellian language of the CCP means forwarding independent information to Western media. He was freed on bail as evidence against him was scarce. Now he is at home, but he is obliged to remain in his city and should be ready to report to the police on call 7/24.

The reporter who made it possible for Bitter Winter to publish the first and so far only video from inside one of dreadful transformation through education camps in Xinjiang was among the 45 arrested, and is still among those missing in action, who disappeared leaving no trace.

Hope always dies the last, but as time progresses, chances to obtain more information on those missing, or to see them coming back home, diminishes. This should concern and alarm all the friends of freedom of the press in the international community.

Tagged With: Human Rights, Religious Persecution

Marco Respinti
Marco Respinti

Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), essayist, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.

Related articles

  • Nanning Christian Pastor Detained—For No Reason Whatsoever

    Nanning Christian Pastor Detained—For No Reason Whatsoever

  • Pakistan, Police to Christian Churches: “Hire Private Guards, We Cannot Protect You”

    Pakistan, Police to Christian Churches: “Hire Private Guards, We Cannot Protect You”

  • Historic Hindu Temple Demolished in Karachi, Mayor Vainly Tries to Deny It Happened

    Historic Hindu Temple Demolished in Karachi, Mayor Vainly Tries to Deny It Happened

  • “Xizang”: China Insists on Depriving Tibet of Its Name

    “Xizang”: China Insists on Depriving Tibet of Its Name

Keep Reading

  • The Hague Human Rights Film Festival: Movies Vindicate Persecuted Women
    The Hague Human Rights Film Festival: Movies Vindicate Persecuted Women

    The second annual Global Human Rights Defence’s Human Rights Film Festival in The Hague presented the sufferings of Tajik, Yazidi, Ahmadi, Pakistani, Uyghur, and other women.

  • Bengbu Dissident Pastor and Co-Workers Prosecuted for Fraud
    Bengbu Dissident Pastor and Co-Workers Prosecuted for Fraud

    Wang Changchun and others from the Living Stone Reformed Church were detained in April for “illegal business operations.” Now they are accused of a more serious crime.

  • Pakistan: Another Sikh Man Killed in a Hate Crime in Peshawar
    Pakistan: Another Sikh Man Killed in a Hate Crime in Peshawar

    Shopkeeper Manmohan Singh was assassinated last week. Two days before, hakim Tarlok Singh barely escaped. 

  • Post-COVID Purge: Over 2,100 Church of Almighty God Members Arrested in Two Provinces
    Post-COVID Purge: Over 2,100 Church of Almighty God Members Arrested in Two Provinces

    In Anhui and Jiangsu, as soon as COVID quarantines ceased, the banned church’s devotees started being persecuted again. Two died.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

MOST READ

  • Why the Unification Church Should Not Be Dissolved. 1. A General Outline by Tatsuki Nakayama
  • Gansu: World-Famous Xiguan Mosque Is Also “Sinicized” by Ma Wenyan
  • Why the Unification Church Should Not Be Dissolved. 2. Dissolving Would Be Contrary to the Law by Tatsuki Nakayama
  • China’s Strange Battle Against Buddhists Releasing Mineral Water into Rivers by Gladys Kwok
  • Why the Unification Church Should Not Be Dissolved. 3. The Truth About “Spiritual Sales” and “Excessive Donations” by Tatsuki Nakayama
  • China Promotes a “Confucianized” Approach to the Holy Quran by Ma Wenyan
  • Can Religious Liberty Bring Taiwan to Build an Alternative International Diplomacy? by Marco Respinti

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY