Arrested by the police, a member of The Church of Almighty God, managed to escape, forcing authorities to start a manhunt, promising local population financial rewards for tip-offs.
Kang Min (pseudonym) is a member of The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement, from Dazhou city in Sichuan Province. On April 18, 2018, he was arrested by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police for sharing the gospel. By sheer luck, he was later able to escape from the police station. Expecting to catch Kang Min, the police established checkpoints on major streets and widely distributed photos of him offering financial rewards to anyone who would report on him.
At 2 a.m. on April 18, two officers from the Dazhou police station silently snuck into the home of Kang Min and arrested him; he was very ill and deep in sleep. After forcibly taking him to the police station, officers ordered him to stop sharing the gospel, saying, “Last time we held you for a month, but this time you’ll get a life sentence.”
At a little past 2 p.m., Kang Min saw that no officers were keeping watch, and took the opportunity to slip out of the police station. He stayed out of sight until dark and then went to the house of a fellow Church member. That evening, authorities mobilized many police officers from four nearby towns to search for Kang Min through the night. Five officers, together with the town deputy secretary and the village secretary searched the home Kang Min shared with his parents for five times. Not finding him, they moved on to raid the homes of his landlord and neighbors.
The next morning, the police showed a photograph of Kang Min to people on buses and motorcycles as well as to taxi drivers in the area of Dazhou, inquiring into his whereabouts; they sent his picture to local government-controlled Three-Self churches, requiring their cooperation in the search.
The local village head demanded at the village assembly that local villagers cooperated in the attempt to arrest Kang Min. The town government sent photographs of Kang Min to every village in the area and promised a reward of 1,000 RMB to motivate them to report him. The news spread like wildfire, and Kang Min was in grave danger. He had no choice but to flee and is still unable to return home.
Kang Min was previously arrested in December 2012 for his belief and was released after a month in detention, after which, his friends and family started actively opposing his faith, his son even refused to see him. In April 2017, after a police tip-off that Kang Min was still practicing his religion, the police started continuously monitoring him.
Reported by Yao Zhangjin
Yao Zhangjin (uses pseudonyms for security reasons) is from Chengdu, Sichuan. He was baptized into the Christian faith during his university studies. It was also at that time when he learned about the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Christians in China. Several times, he has witnessed believers being arrested. Yao writes about these incidents and submits his articles for publication in various overseas media outlets. Now he joins Bitter Winter and is a special correspondent covering Sichuan, Chongqing, and some other regions.