• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • TESTIMONIES
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
  • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / China / Testimonies China

Preacher Arrested and Tortured While Attempting to Save Others

07/30/2018Piao Junying |

Torture room
Two house church pastors were apprehended while preaching in Xinjiang; a colleague tries to secure their release but is arrested and tortured herself.

In December 2017, two pastors from a house church in Songyuan city, Jilin, were arrested while preaching in Huocheng county of the Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang. Another preacher from their church went to a local police station to negotiate their release but was apprehended herself, detained for ten days and cruelly tortured.

According to witness reports, after the two pastors were arrested, preacher Li Ya (pseudonym) rushed to Huocheng county’s police station hoping to secure their release; however, the police not only refused to release the pastors but also arrested her. During interrogations, police repeatedly questioned Li Ya about the leaders and members of her church and also wanted to know who had sent her. Since Li Ya refused to answer, officers used a towel to gag her, then forced open her eyes and poured pepper spray in them. When she still refused to give away any information about the church, officers made Li Ya sit on a tiger bench (a torture device when legs are tied to the bench, while bricks or other hard materials are put underneath them) for approximately half an hour, putting her through unbearable pain. Police also beat her inner thighs with electric batons, making Li Ya faint several times from pain.

The interrogation was ultimately unsuccessful, and after holding Li Ya for ten days, the police let her and the two pastors go. The torture has had severe effects on Li Ya’s health: her inner thighs often itch painfully, and she has to continually scratch them, causing her a great deal of irritation in her daily life.

Reported by Piao Junying

Tagged With: House Churches, Torture

Piao Junying profile picture
Piao Junying

Uses a pseudonym for security reasons.

Related articles

  • A Call for Sanctions to Stop Anti-Uyghur Brutality in Xinjiang

    A Call for Sanctions to Stop Anti-Uyghur Brutality in Xinjiang

  • Chi Jie: Death of Tibetan Activist in Jail Confirmed After Six Years

    Chi Jie: Death of Tibetan Activist in Jail Confirmed After Six Years

  • Covenant Home Church Banned in Shanxi

    Covenant Home Church Banned in Shanxi

  • Xi’an Church of Abundance: Crackdown on a Historical House Church

    Xi’an Church of Abundance: Crackdown on a Historical House Church

Keep Reading

  • Kazakh Voices from Camps and Jails in Xinjiang. 3. Bakytgul Ramazan
    Kazakh Voices from Camps and Jails in Xinjiang. 3. Bakytgul Ramazan

    “I was tortured for 24 hours on a tiger chair”: our exclusive series of testimonies from ethnic Kazakhs persecuted in China continues.

  • How China and Russia Manipulate the George Floyd Case: A Uyghur View
    How China and Russia Manipulate the George Floyd Case: A Uyghur View

    Unlike in China, where police officers who kill or “disappear” Uyghurs such as Imammemet Ali are not punished, in the U.S. the officer who killed Floyd went to jail.

  • House Churches Attacked and Banned in Several Provinces
    House Churches Attacked and Banned in Several Provinces

    In Beijing, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Jilin, and Sichuan police raids targeted churches that refused to join the CCP-controlled Three-Self Church. Orders came from Xi Jinping himself.

  • Le Nazioni Unite dichiarano che i cristiani in Cina sono “a rischio di tortura”
    Le Nazioni Unite dichiarano che i cristiani in Cina sono “a rischio di tortura”

    In una decisione storica riguardante una rifugiata della Chiesa di Dio Onnipotente in Svizzera, il Comitato contro la tortura ha stabilito che il rischio esiste per tutti i cristiani.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • France Joins China and Russia by Introducing Special Police Techniques Against “Cults” by Massimo Introvigne
  • “Socialist Spiritual Civilization”: The Great Comeback of an Old CCP Concept by Hu Zimo
  • The Fate of Tibet After the Inevitable: A Tibetan Opinion by Ugyen Gyalpo
  • Ngaba Prefecture, Sichuan: Massive Re-Education to Prevent Tibetan Self-Immolations by Lopsang Gurung
  • Wang Hai: Miao Christian Pastor Still Harassed and Investigated by Mo Yuan
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and the Visual Arts. 7. The Scientologist as Artist by Massimo Introvigne
  • Mark Fino: No Asylum in Japan for Evangelist Threatened in Bangladesh by Tom Eskildsen

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY