A member of The Church of Almighty God was arrested at the Shanghai airport after she came back from Japan.
On July 18, 2018, Tan Ruihua (pseudonym), a member of The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement, who had worked in Japan for the past three years, returned home to China. As soon as her flight landed at the Shanghai Pudong Airport, the CCP police arrested her.
According to a passenger on the plane, when they had just landed, and before the passengers could disembark, a male airport officer came on the plane, checked Tan Ruihua’ identification and took her away without presenting any credentials.
According to her husband, Tan Ruihua is now being held at a jail in Shandong Province. The police refused his request to see his wife, saying that the reason for Tan’s arrest was her belief in Almighty God.
According to sources, during Tan Ruihua’s three years in Japan, the CCP police came to her home in 2016 and again in 2018 to ask her family about Tan’s belief, her life abroad, and other questions.
Tan Ruihua’s situation remains unknown, and her family is under surveillance by the CCP.
Bitter Winter plans to report on how religions are allowed, or not allowed, to operate in China and how some are severely persecuted after they are labeled as “xie jiao,” or heterodox teachings. We plan to publish news difficult to find elsewhere, analyses, and debates.
Placed under the editorship of Massimo Introvigne, one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally, “Bitter Winter” is a cooperative enterprise by scholars, human rights activists, and members of religious organizations persecuted in China (some of them have elected, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous).