In Anhui and Jiangsu, as soon as COVID quarantines ceased, the banned church’s devotees started being persecuted again. Two died.
by Jiang Tao
After the COVID pandemic quarantine was fully lifted, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide purge against The Church of Almighty God (CAG). According to incomplete figures collected by the CAG and shared with a “Bitter Winter” reporter, from January to July 2023, at least 2,100 church members were arrested in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces alone, and two of them were persecuted to the point of death.
According to an Anhui Province government employee’s confidential statement, in 2023 the CCP issued a new secret document aimed at completely wiping out the CAG. It demands “the complete annihilation of its domestic organizational structure, a large-scale reduction of the number of current members, and effective curbing of its development abroad,” as well as the intensification of efforts to deprogram members through extreme physical and mental pressure.
One Anhui Province public security officer said, “This is a nationwide, coordinated purge; our focus this year is on cracking down on The Church of Almighty God.” The arrest operation was launched in all regions of Anhui Province after this document was issued. Out of these regions, 230 CAG members were arrested in the city of Bengbu, and 140 in the city of Anqing.
On April 11, Chuzhou City police launched a coordinated arrest operation, apprehending at least 45 CAG members in a single day.
One Anhui Province police officer disclosed that specialized agencies have been established from the national down to the local level to thoroughly search for and arrest CAG devotees. He said, “Every village has been ordered to conduct more arrests of believers. Those who apprehend a sufficient number will be rewarded, while those who do not will be penalized. The public is also encouraged to report on CAG members for a reward. Our instructions are, ‘It’s better to get the wrong person than to let a single one slip through. Any suspicious individual should be arrested and interrogated.’”
The situation was equally grave in neighboring Jiangsu Province. On February 15 and 16, at least 44 CAG members were arrested in the two cities of Wuxi and Jiangyin. On May 16, police arrested at least 54 CAG members in Xuyi County, Huai’an City, and held them at Qingshui Shanzhuang Hotel for deprogramming.
Starting on June 15, the Suqian City government established a special task force and has arrested at least 56 CAG members.
At least 109 people were arrested in Huai’an in July.
Devotees have been subjected to physical and psychological torture after their arrests, and cases of people being tortured to death also occurred.
On April 28, Ms. Wu, a CAG member from Wuhe County, Bengbu City, Anhui Province, was taken against her will to one of the reeducation centers called “Care Home” for forced deprogramming. On May 22, Ms. Wu was discovered dead in that center. The police claim that she hanged herself.
A CAG member who was subject to deprogramming along with Ms. Wu revealed that before her death, she told him that the police had extorted a confession from her and forced her to identify another CAG devotee. Ms. Wu told the witness|, “I didn’t know that person, but they forced me to say that I did. They threatened that if I didn’t, they’d sentence me to 20 years.”
The witness continued, “We had to learn atheistic ideology and theory along with fake news smearing CAG every day. In the evening we had to write about what our takeaways were. We also had to write things blaspheming God. Also, they were constantly threatening us with prison and heavy sentences, that our children wouldn’t be able to work in government or be able to find a job. They said that our families’ prospects will be affected and that’s all our fault, that our families will hate us.”
Police in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province secretly arrested 141 CAG devotees in June. Those arrested were held in the basement of a hotel where they underwent forcible deprogramming. On July 13, after escaping, one of those CAG members was pursued by police onto an apartment complex roof, where she had no choice but to jump to her death.
A CAG devotee who is still a minor was arrested in Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province in early June, and then taken to a hotel for secret interrogation. In their attempt to force her to divulge information on the church, they relentlessly slapped her in the face and hit her face with a water bottle. The left side of her face was red and swollen from the beating and her mouth had blood blisters. The police also handcuffed her hands behind her back and inserted a meter-long stick between her armpits; three police then each stood on a chair and lifted the rod up, suspending her in the air. After that, the police taped her mouth shut, stuffed toilet paper up her right nostril, then inserted a lit cigarette into her left nostril.
She told “Bitter Winter” after she was released, “In an instant the smell of smoke choked my nose and throat, I couldn’t open my eyes, and tears were running down my face. It felt like there was smoke inside my head and lungs. It was awful, and I couldn’t get a breath. I felt like I’d lost all strength in my whole body, and I was dizzy; I nearly collapsed.” After the police removed the cigarette, they poured water into her nose two consecutive times, then immediately suspended her from a window so that only the tips of her toes could touch the floor, she reported.
Another CAG member from Jiangsu Province, whose left leg suffered a comminuted fracture due to an accident and had not yet fully recovered, was whipped with a branch in the left foot as well as continuously kicked in the arch of the foot and leg by police, in an effort to force her to divulge personal and church information.
The arrest situation in other provinces is similarly serious. In just a single day, over 1,000 CAG devotees were arrested in Zhejiang Province, and one of them was tortured to death.
