A member of The Church of Almighty God was imprisoned when she returned to China after her asylum application was refused in Switzerland.
Wu Xin (pseudonym), born on April 5, 1956, in Linshu County of Linyi city, Shandong, joined The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement in September of 2004. On April 23, 2015, she fled to Switzerland to evade the persecutions by the Chinese Communist Party authorities directed toward members of the Church. The Swiss government refused her application for asylum and deported Wu Xin on May 2, 2017. Back in China, she was too afraid to return home and rented a room in the family housing facility of a construction company in Linshu County.
On the night of June 27, 2017, officers from the Linshu County Public Security Bureau of Linyi forced entry into Wu Xin’s room and arrested her, seizing a laptop computer and a mobile phone she bought abroad, as well as her bank passbook and assets card. Authorities froze Wu Xin’s and her younger sister’s bank accounts.
On June 30, Wu Xin was sentenced to administrative detention for 15 days accused of “participation in xie jiao (heterodox) movement.”
On July 14, the Linshu County Public Security Bureau detained Wu Xin once again on criminal charges of “using a xie jiao organization to undermine law enforcement.”
On August 18, the Linshu County court issued an order for Wu Xin’s arrest, and sentenced her to a 3.5-year limited prison sentence for “suspected use of a xie jiao organization to undermine law enforcement,” and fined her 30,000 RMB. She was sent to the Linyi City Women’s Detention Center where she is serving her sentence, scheduled to be released on December 29, 2020.
Source: Direct reports from China
Bitter Winter reports 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 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).