After being arrested by the CCP police for their faith, members of The Church of Almighty God (CAG) are mostly subjected to torture during interrogation. Many of these Christians are injured and disabled as a result.
“The CCP’s detention house is practically like a hell on earth. If not for God’s protection, I would not have been able to get out of the gate of that hell after my over one-year stay in it,” said Lin Wen (pseudonym), a CAG member from an eastern province of China, having a lingering fear while recalling her traumatic experience. She was arrested for faith and subjected to a series of torture during interrogation, which caused many after-effects on her including loss of hearing in the right ear. She was later given a prison sentence.
One afternoon in June 2015, Lin Wen was riding a scooter on the way back home when the police stopped her and forcibly took her to the local police station for interrogation.
During the interrogation, police officers questioned her about the church items found out from her scooter, but to no avail. Then, they slapped her face with a leather bag and handcuffed her to an iron bench. During the course, the officers took turns, two in each shift, to watch her and prevent her from sleeping. Some officers even went to her house to conduct a search. They confiscated the over 1,000 RMB (about $ 150) of church money kept in her house and some gospel materials.
The second day, police officers continued interrogating Lin Wen. As she refused to answer, the officers beat her hand joints with a plastic ruler, making her hands black and blue.
Afterward, one officer brought photographs of some Christians and asked Lin Wen to identify. Since she said she didn’t know the people in the photos, the officer became exasperated and fisted her in the ribs and then rolled his fist over her ribs back and forth, which made Lin Wen scream again and again. During the following over one year, her ribs gave unbearable pain as long as she breathed deeply.
Failing to extract information they wanted, the officers slapped Lin Wen in the face with the spine of a book, making her face swollen up and her right ear deafened with long-term tinnitus.
Since the interrogation was fruitless, the officers forced her to press her digital fingerprint on a paper in the computer which is about blasphemy against God. Lin Wen refused as always. Then, an officer kicked her nearly two meters away, stomped her body with his foot, and finally forcibly grabbed her hand and pressed her fingerprint. Later, Lin Wen was sent to a detention house.
The environment in the detention house was rather deplorable. She was given dish with cabbage often mixed with mud, insects, withered grass and dirty cigarette butts. Living in the humid environment, Lin Wen’s foot was covered with blisters.
During detention, Lin Wen was often asked to peel garlic, which caused her fingernails to turn black and fall off. As her hands was previously injured from the officers’ beatings, her right thumb became incapable of movement, and only recovered a bit after a year. The nasty environment in the detention house was deteriorating her health, although she was always healthy before arrest. As a result, she often felt dizzy and nauseous, and once fainted and fell suddenly.
In 2016, Lin Wen was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and four years’ probation with execution of the sentence outside prison. Afterward, she had to report to the local judicial bureau once a month and her mobile phone was also monitored.
Lin Wen is just one of the tens of thousands of Christians who have suffered the CCP’s persecution. The 2019 International Religious Freedom Report, published on June 10, 2020 by the U.S Department of State, details the persecution of The Church of Almighty God. In 2019, at least 6,132 CAG members were arrested (while the number is 11,111 in 2018), 3,824 subjected to various tortures (685 in 2018) and 1,355 were sentenced (392 in 2018), among which 19 persecuted to death (20 in 2018).
