A husband and wife, members of a house church, were reported and arrested for organizing a congregation meeting.
In the morning of October 21, 2016, the public security bureau of a county in Chuxiong city, Yunnan Province dispatched three squad cars and over ten police officers to the home of Christian Tian Hua (pseudonym). She was working in a field outside at the time and upon learning the news, immediately rushed home where she found two armed officers guarding the door, about a dozen officers inside the house, and her husband in handcuffs. The officers immediately confiscated Tian Hua’s cellphone and searched the home without providing any documentation. They seized a Bible, religious CDs, a computer, an MP5 player, and other things and escorted the couple to the municipal detention center.
Tian Hua was released on 2,000 RMB bail pending trial after 14 days, but her husband was charged with “participating in a xie jiao” (heterodox teachings) and sentenced to two years in prison.
According to an informed source, after the couple had been arrested, the police went from home to home in the village searching each household and arrested another Christian couple who had previously also organized meetings of their congregation. In the county’s public security bureau, the couple was subjected to intense atheist indoctrination in an attempt to force them to renounce their faith.
To date, two plain-clothed local police officers are monitoring all Christians in the village, which makes the villagers feel alarmed and anxious.
Reported by Bai Lin
Bai Lin (uses pseudonyms for security reasons) is a 27-year-old Miao woman from Yunnan, graduated from Yunnan Normal University’s School of Communications. After learning that many petitioners from her hometown have gone missing, she started paying attention to human rights issues in China. She writes articles for and provides information to several foreign media outlets. In 2018, she took the initiative to join Bitter Winter and became a special correspondent covering Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province, and some other regions in China.