Some believers from The Church of Almighty God were taken into custody, and others were forced to flee their homes as a result of a special arrest operation launched by authorities in mid-October.
On October 18, the Anhui Province authorities launched an arrest operation of believers that belong to The Church of Almighty God (CAG) in multiple cities of this eastern province of China. According to the preliminary calculations by the Church, in just two weeks, over 100 of its members were arrested in Hefei city alone. More than 500 people were forced to flee their homes and go into hiding. The authorities have confiscated at least 40,000 RMB (about 5,700 USD) of church money. Nearly 100 members of the Church have also been arrested in Huaibei, Bengbu, and other cities in the province.
The majority of the arrested had been previously detained by the authorities for their religious belief or had applied for a passport in recent years. According to sources, all of them have been tracked down based on their personal information recorded by the authorities.
As Bitter Winter has previously reported, on September 11, an anti-CAG operation was launched in Anhui’s neighboring Zhejiang Province. By the end of October, the number of arrested CAG members there reached 591 people. The family of a woman who died after she had been taken into custody suspects that she was tortured to death during detention; they found numerous bruises on her chest, back, and legs after her body has been returned to them.
Reported by Jiang Tao
