To make believers renounce their faith and disclose information about the Church, the CCP uses a variety of torture techniques, from electric shock to sleep deprivation.
by Yang Guang’an
A member of The Church of Almighty God (CAG) from the eastern province of Jiangsu, in his 70s, was arrested this July just because he belonged to a banned religious group and was brutally tortured to extort information about the Church. “A police officer poked me with an electric baton that crackled constantly,” the believer told Bitter Winter. “He poked my private parts twice, causing unbearable pain.”
Since he refused to disclose any information, the officer ordered him to stare at a strong light and continued shocking his thigh. “I could not open my eyes and felt that my brain was about to explode,” the man continued. “It was so painful that I wished to die. The officer then seized one of my legs and threatened to break it.”
The Church of Almighty God is suffering increasingly severe crackdowns at the hand of the CCP. During the first half of 2020, over one thousand CAG members were arrested. In Jiangsu Province, 388 CAG members were arrested from January to October. Many detained believers are tortured during interrogation. Sleep deprivation, chili water spray, and suspending people as their hands are handcuffed to the ceiling or a door frame are among many techniques employed by the CCP to torture people of faith.
Bitter Winter has learned that, to make a 60-odd-year-old believer with cerebral infarction give up her faith, the police shone a bright light into her eyes several times. They knocked her in the head with an electric baton and slapped her face and neck.
Another CAG member was arrested in September 2018 and was deprived of sleep for six days and seven nights. Officers continuously shook her body, slapped the table, or yelled at her to wake her up whenever she closed her eyes.
She was later handcuffed to a rope, allowing her toes to barely touch the floor. “It seemed that my hands were being torn apart; they soon became numb,” the women told Bitter Winter. “Soon, the numbness turned into pain; it felt as if thousands of ants were chewing on me. My legs kept shaking, and it felt that my toes would break. When I was finally put down, my hands were badly swollen due to improper blood circulation.” Because she refused to say anything about her Church, the officers held her head under water three times. The believer was later sentenced to one year and ten months in prison.
A 20-odd-year-old CAG member from Jiangsu was tortured after her arrest in May. During the interrogation, the police pulled her cuffed hands behind the back in opposite directions, jerking the handcuffs back and forth. They then put a hood sprayed with chili water on her head and wiped her lips, nostrils, and eyes with a paper towel soaked with chili water. “I collapsed from the pain, and my whole face was burning,” the believer recalled. “I could not open my eyes because it felt like needles were piercing them.”
