Source: Direct Reports from China
Date: May 23, 2018
Bitter Winter continuously receives direct reports from China about the government’s activities to crack down on various religions in the country. Quite often, the ways the authorities harass the believers is hard to comprehend and strange, to say the least. Like this particular report about a woman who was arrested because she had videos with religious content.
On May 2, 2018, at around 9:30 a.m., two Christians, Zhu (75 years old) and Liu (73 years old), boarded a ferry in a dock located in Wangying Township, Yangxin County, Hubei Province, to go to the Maoping Church for a meeting. Just as the ferry was about to sail, three men in plain clothes suddenly boarded it. Without presenting any credentials, they ordered the ferry to stop, saying that all ferry passengers will be checked. A man took out a black round-shaped detector from his backpack and used it to scan the passengers. When it came to Zhu, the detector sent out alarms. The man discovered two TF memory cards in her pocket and plugged them into his cellphone. Seeing that these cards contained religious videos, he said to Zhu, “You broke the law with your belief in God. Follow me to the police station.” Before she could explain anything, the other two men took her away to a local police station.