Brother Zhao Weikai has been arrested on May 17. The house church has been repeatedly harassed in the last few months.
by Qi Junzao
The CCP’s assault on house churches continues on a nationwide scale.
On May 17, at 8 in the morning, a dozen police officers came to the home of Brother Zhao Weikai, a co-worker at Taiyuan Reformed Church in Taiyuan, the capital and the largest city (with a population of more than 4 million) of the northern Shanxi province.
They showed to him a summons mentioning “religious fraud,” but his co-religionists claim that the document was not signed nor stamped, and was thus of dubious validity.
Brother Zhao was taken away by the police, and his cell phones and other items were confiscated.
Co-religionists do not know what Brother Zhao is accused of, and whether he will be released or formally incriminated. They report that it is not the first time Brother Zhao has been taken to the police station and interrogated. The police told him that he should stop homeschooling minors, which is forbidden in China to all churches, including the government-approved ones.
Every week, if not every day, there are new reports of pastors and co-workers in house churches threatened, intimated, and arrested. This confirms that these are not local incidents, but parts of a nationwide plan to compel house churches to join the state-controlled Three Self Church. Those who refuse are continuously harassed with the hope that they will cease their activities.
