After university authorities discovered that a student was a member of The Church of Almighty God, he was forced to leave his studies and flee.
Li Chao (pseudonym) studied at a university in Henan and was also a member of The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement. On April 20, 2018, at approximately 8 a.m., his mother, also a member of the Church, Zhang Meng (pseudonym) received a phone call from one of her son’s university instructors asking her to come to his office. She went there the next morning and was informed that the local Public Security Bureau had discovered her son was a member of The Church and demanded Li Chao to give information about it and sign a guarantee that he would no longer believe in God; otherwise, he wouldn’t be allowed to continue his studies.
The instructor asked Zhang Meng to work with her son on his ideological outlook; if his attitudes did not change, Li Chao would be handed over to the university’s security department, or even sent directly to the Public Security Bureau. Other instructors threatened Zhang Meng, “Believing in God is a lot worse than fighting or misbehaving. If Li Chao explains everything well tomorrow morning, he can return to classes in the afternoon. If not, the police are going to beat him into a corner, and you’ll be implicated as well.”
Faring arrest and persecutions, Zhang Meng and Li Chao left the university campus before dawn the next day.
There is a growing number of reports about students in China expelled or forced to drop out of schools if they want to maintain their religious beliefs. Sometimes such cases are publicized by the authorities as slanderous news, severely harming the students’ prospects and violating their religious liberties.
Reported by Jiang Tao
