TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1. Overview
  • 1.1 In 2019, Religious Persecution in China Generally Worsened Under Xi Jinping’s Rule
  • 1.2 Overview of the CCP’s Persecution of The Church of Almighty God
• 2. Summary of the Nature of the CCP’s Persecution
  • 2.1 The CCP Continued Its Comprehensive Investigations and Use of Advanced Technology to Hunt and Arrest CAG Christians
  • 2.2 The CCP Launched Special Crackdown Campaigns to Carry out Unified Massive Arrest Operations Throughout the Country
  • 2.3 The CCP Intensified Its Large-Scale Forced Indoctrination and Transformation of Christians, Compelling Them to Renounce Their Faith
  • 2.4 Persecution Remained Severe in 2019, With at Least 19 CAG Christians Persecuted to Death
  • 2.5 Over 1,000 CAG Christians Were Sentenced to Prison in 2019, With Twelve Given Heavy Sentences of 10 to 12 Years
  • 2.6 The CCP Established Lifelong Controls Over CAG Christians and Incited Society to Hate and Discriminate Against Them
  • 2.7 The CCP Continued to Implement Its “Extradition Project” and Expanded Investigations and Crackdowns on The Church of Almighty God Abroad
• 3. The International Community Continued to Take Note of CAG’s Persecution Crisis
• 4. Conclusion
• Annex: 21 Selected Typical Cases in 2019
  • 1) The CCP Subjects CAG Christians to Extrajudicial Killings
  • 2) The CCP Deprives CAG Christians of Their Right to Life
  • 3) The CCP Subjects CAG Christians to Torture and Indoctrination
  • 4) The CCP Sets Hefty Bounties for CAG Christians
  • 5) The CCP Seizes Christians’ Personal Assets
  • 6) The CCP Arbitrarily Detains and Imprisons CAG Christians

Note：Cover Image Reconstructing the Persecution CAG Christians Suffered.

Some aliases are used in this report for the sake of protecting the involved Christians and their families. All aliases are marked with an asterisk * to distinguish them from real names.

1. Overview

1.1 In 2019, Religious Persecution in China Generally Worsened Under Xi Jinping’s Rule

In 2019, authorities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headed by Xi Jinping continued to make strong efforts to implement the new Regulations on Religious Affairs throughout the country and to accelerate the “Sinicization” of religion. Claiming that “Religion is vying against the Party in every field for ideological territory and people’s hearts,” authorities have comprehensively suppressed religious belief in order to realize their preposterous aim to “accelerate and promote the demise of religion” and to establish China as a “zone of atheism.” The CCP has tried to ban all house churches that have declined to become part of the official churches.^[1] As for the religions under official control, the CCP has transformed them into the image of communism and socialism, requiring all religions to reinterpret their doctrines and canons according to “core socialist values,” as well as rewrite classic religious texts such as the Bible and the Quran.^[2] New regulations have also been promulgated requiring religious groups to obey CCP leadership and to “spread the principles and policies of the CCP.”^[3] Authorities have been suppressing religious groups such as The Church of Almighty God, the Shouters, and the All Sphere Church under the guise of “cleaning up gang crime and eliminating evil,” equating this with preventing “Color Revolutions” and fighting terrorism, making it a primary part of the work of “safeguarding the regime’s security.”^[4] Under the totalitarian repression of the CCP, there has been an overall deterioration in the situation regarding religious persecution in China.

In Xinjiang, nearly three million Muslims are still being held indefinitely in reeducation concentration camps. The “Xinjiang strike method” has spread throughout the entire country;^[5] mosques have been demolished and Arabic language schools have been banned; a great number of house churches, Catholic gathering places, and Three-Self churches have been shut down; pastors, priests, and believers have been arrested and given heavy sentences. The CCP has continued to make great efforts to tear down outdoor Buddhist and Taoist statues and temples; in Tibet, thousands of monks and nuns have been detained, mistreated, and subjected to torture. The CCP has also conducted sweeps for the Bible and other religious literature and burned it all in the name of “eradicating pornography and illegal publications,” and anything pertaining to religion has been completely removed from all school textbooks.^[6] The Communist Party has forced religious personnel to integrate socialist values and pro-Party content into their sermons; it has forced believers to sing “red” songs, and has planted false religious leaders within religious institutions.^[7] In addition, the CCP has done its utmost to bestow “divinity” upon its leaders: Xi Jinping Thought has encroached upon religious sites; portraits of Xi Jinping have replaced those of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the cross;^[8] books of Xi Jinping’s theory have replaced religious materials;^[9] Xi Jinping has established himself as a “god.” This is very much akin to a reenactment of the Cultural Revolution. Among all religious groups persecuted in China, The Church of Almighty God has suffered particularly severe suppression and persecution by the CCP. According to incomplete statistics, in 2019, at least 32,815 CAG Christians were arrested or harassed by the authorities simply because of their belief in Almighty God. Among them, 6,132 members were arrested; 3,824 members suffered various forms of torture and forced indoctrination; 1,355 members were sentenced, with 12 members given harsh punishment of 10 years in prison or more. It is well-documented that 19 believers died as a result of persecution that year.

As for the situation surrounding religion in China today, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom held from July 15 to 18, 2019, “China is home to one of the worst human rights crises of our time; it is truly the stain of the century.” On January 8, 2020, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) issued its 2019 Annual Report, and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Co-chair of CECC, criticized the state of human rights in China under Xi Jinping’s rule at the press conference, saying that there is no worst, just worse.

1.2 Overview of the CCP’s Persecution of The Church of Almighty God

The Church of Almighty God (CAG) is a new Christian church in China which came into being because of the appearance and work of Almighty God. Since its establishment in 1991, it has suffered frantic suppression at the hands of the CCP. In 1995, the CCP added The Church of Almighty God, the Shouters, the All Range Church and many other Christian house churches on its xie jiao list, and began to cruelly suppress and persecute them. According to incomplete statistics, just between 2011 and the end of 2019, more than 400,000 CAG Christians were arrested by the Chinese authorities, and it is well-documented that the number of believers who have died as a result of persecution since the Church’s establishment has reached 146.

The No. 1 Central Committee Document issued for 2019 by the CCP demanded ongoing severe crackdowns on the CAG and other house churches. In early 2019, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) mobilized a special operation to “continue to promote digging out and cracking down” on the CAG, designating this as one of its important tasks for “maintaining stability.” Confidential government documents regarding strikes against the Church have been issued across the entire country, demanding that focus be placed on destroying and banning gathering places, arresting primary leaders, seizing church donations, and carrying out the fight both at home and abroad, in order to realize the goal to “fully identify and destroy” the Church.^[10]

Soon after, another round of operations to suppress and persecute the CAG swept across mainland China. The CCP used a combination of sophisticated surveillance technology along with entering and searching homes to carry out blanket raids of CAG Christians. Church members in every region have faced large-scale arrests, home searches, brutal torture, forced indoctrination and transformation, and long-term surveillance and harassment. According to incomplete statistics, in 2019, at least 32,815 CAG Christians were directly persecuted by the authorities simply because they believed in Almighty God, and because they engaged in such normal church activities as attending gatherings and preaching the gospel. In 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in mainland China, at least 26,683 Church members have suffered harassment, including having their personal information collected, being forced to sign “statements of guarantee” which would mean renouncing their faith, being forced to be photographed, recorded on video and monitored, and having their fingerprints, blood samples and hair collected, etc.; at least 6,132 members have been arrested, and among them 4,161 members have been held in detention either for short or long periods, with 3,824 members suffering all manner of cruel tortures and forced indoctrination; 1,355 members have been sentenced, with 481 members given severe sentences of 3 years or more, 64 members given sentences of 7 years or more, and 12 members having been sentenced to 10 years or more, among whom, Xiang Caihua and Cui Jing from Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Ouyang Qiuping in the same region was arrested twice for believing in God and sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison in total.^[11] The European human rights organizations, Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF)^[12] and the Association for the Defense of Human Rights and Religious Freedom (ADHRRF)^[13] have published the information of 4,169 CAG members detained in the year 2019 in their database of prisoners of conscience. That year, at least 19 believers died as a result of persecution; at least RMB 390 million (about USD 56.8 million) was unlawfully seized (including both church money and personal assets). The figures above only represent a portion of the CAG Christians victimized by the CCP during the past year. Due to the severity of the persecution, the majority of the data cannot be recorded.

2. Summary of the Nature of the CCP’s Persecution

2.1 The CCP Continued Its Comprehensive Investigations and Use of Advanced Technology to Hunt and Arrest CAG Christians

In 2019, the CCP continued to carry out thorough door-to-door, person-by-person investigations across the entire country to find and arrest CAG Christians. Multiple confidential government documents were issued in provinces such as Shanxi, Shandong, Jilin, Liaoning, and Anhui with clear requirements to ascertain the local situation regarding the Church, including the number of members, the Church’s organizational structure, core members, funds from offerings, channels of contact with the Church abroad, and information on those who have fled overseas. These documents also demanded that Christians discovered through investigation be arrested, entered into the grid management and public security big data platform, and set as key targets for control. The documents also stressed the use of big data technology and information technology tools for the purpose of arresting more Christians through special operations.^[14]

After the documents were issued, the CCP continued to require all regions to complete the Religion Survey Form, and to appoint specific individuals in every village and community (community police officers, auxiliary police officers, grid administrators, etc.) to go door-to-door under the guise of collecting information, such as checking utilities, conducting demographic surveys, or asking for homeownership information to check for CAG Christians within their jurisdiction. The CCP also recruited large numbers of property management company employees, unemployed vagrants, and local thugs to collect and furnish information on suspected believers and their family members.^[15] Medical personnel were also required to inquire after the religious beliefs of patients and their family members.^[16] The CCP has issued large numbers of reward notices and brochures in many locales and online, and it has established boxes for submitting reports, all in an effort to incite the people to report on CAG Christians. It continued forcefully collecting biological data (including DNA samples, facial images, fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, retinal scans, blood types, voice patterns, gait, 3D images, etc.) from CAG Christians recorded in their files, then entering it into a nationwide networked database. In addition, the CCP also made use of Skynet, the world’s largest video surveillance system, and its Sharp Eyes project targeting rural areas, to search out and target Christians, carrying out 24-hour surveillance and tracking, arresting people when an opportunity presented itself. It continued monitoring telephones and internet usage nationwide, conducting analyses for sensitive words and screening for Christians; it forcibly installed apps in people’s cellphones to find Christians; it entered the home addresses of Christians it had discovered to install eavesdropping equipment, installed tracking devices in their vehicles, and used GPS and big data management systems for tracking in order to arrest even more Christians.

The CCP’s blanket searches and arrests along with its high-tech surveillance have driven over a million CAG Christians to go on the run. All CAG Christians are faced with the threat of arrest at any moment. Taking Shandong Province as an example, in 2019, after utilizing high-definition cameras to surveil, track, and home in on believers, authorities initiated nearly one hundred arrest operations across the entire province that resulted in the arrest of 924 believers, making up 64.3% of the (1,438) arrests of CAG Christians in the province. Please see Table 1 for details.

Table 1: Statistics of CAG Christians Arrested in Shandong Province as a Result of the CCP’s High-tech Surveillance

In January 2019, the Yanhu sub-division of Shanxi Province’s Yuncheng Public Security Bureau began requiring that owners of rental properties install the “Yuncheng Eyes in the Sky” (天眼运城) app in order to collect information on tenants.^[17] This was combined with other tactics such as the use of Skynet and door-to-door investigations in an investigation that lasted several months, and then on September 9 and 10 in two cities, Yuncheng and Linfen, a coordinated arrest operation was carried out, during which at least 226 CAG Christians were apprehended. On September 16, 24 CAG Christians were arrested in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the majority of which had had tracking equipment installed on their electric bicycles. Due to the nationwide networking of the CCP’s database, pursued Christians are now absolutely unable to lead ordinary lives, not even able to travel, work, seek medical attention, or get documentation normally, as the moment they show their ID cards they will face arrest. Some of the CAG Christians who have been wanted and pursued by the CCP for a number of years have become seriously ill but are unable to seek treatment; they are forced to tolerate the torment of their ailments, even at the cost of death.^[18]

2.2 The CCP Launched Special Crackdown Campaigns to Carry out Unified Massive Arrest Operations Throughout the Country

Once the CCP gained a clear understanding of information on some CAG Christians through its previous investigations and high-tech positioning and tracking, it launched large-scale arrests nationwide. Not all details can be confirmed as some areas, particularly Xinjiang, have become restricted areas that are very tightly monitored and controlled by the CCP. Rough data suggests that in 2019, CCP authorities carried out over 1,000 arrest operations against CAG Christians in provinces, cities, and counties all over the country during which at least 6,132 were arrested. The youngest was just 14 years of age, and the oldest was 86. Out of all of China’s provinces, the persecution was most severe in Shandong; as of late December, there were as many as 1,438 individuals whose arrests had been confirmed. Following are just a few examples of arrest operations that were carried out across the country.

From January to July, officials in Henan Province amplified their efforts to disseminate propaganda and to manufacture a public outcry against The Church of Almighty God. In just over half a year, at least 319 people were arrested and 2,742 were visited at home and harassed by the police.^[19]

In July and August, police forces in Shandong Province were mobilized for concentrated arrests targeting CAG Christians; at least 260 Christians were apprehended, the majority of whom had been tracked and monitored by police for several months through Skynet or Sharp Eyes.^[20]

In early July, Tangshan City in Hebei Province mobilized a police force of approximately 300 officers for an organized strike against The Church of Almighty God, resulting in the arrests of at least 41 Christians, including one pregnant woman. Approximately RMB 50,000 (nearly USD 7,280) in church and personal assets was seized. A local Public Security Bureau insider revealed that the arrest operation had been ordered by the Party Central Committee and secretly mapped out by the provincial inspectorate and the municipal National Security Brigade; prior to the arrest operation itself, secret investigations and monitoring had been ongoing for a number of months.^[21]

In August in the Fujian Province cities of Fuzhou, Putian, and Sanming, 41 CAG Christians were arrested, among whom the oldest was 85 and the youngest only 17; RMB 10,200 (nearly USD 1,485) of personal assets were seized. That month in Guangdong Province, nearly 30 CAG Christians were arrested and detained.^[22]

In the very early morning on September 6, at least 13 gathering places for The Church of Almighty God in Wuhu City, Anhui Province were raided and closed down; at least 42 CAG Christians were arrested by police.^[23]

On September 9 and 10, after having used high-tech surveillance tactics to track and monitor CAG Christians for over a year, a coordinated arrest operation was carried out in the Shanxi Province cities of Yuncheng and Linfen, resulting in the arrests of at least 226 people and the looting of RMB 2,011,961 (over USD 293,000); 170 people were subjected to forced indoctrination.

In October and November, Qingdao City in Shandong Province assembled a thousand special forces police officers to crack down on The Church of Almighty God, ostensibly in a campaign to “clean up gang crime and eliminate evil.” At least 108 CAG Christians were arrested and, within the course of one day in Pingdu City, 24 gathering places were raided, all of which had been watched by CCP police for days, some of them for as long as six months or more.^[24]

Below is a table of (incomplete) statistics showing numbers of CAG Christians who have been arrested, detained, held in custody, and sentenced throughout 30 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) of China:

Table 2: Numbers of CAG Christians Arrested, Detained, Sentenced and Remaining in Custody in 2019

2.3 The CCP Intensified Its Large-Scale Forced Indoctrination and Transformation of Christians, Compelling Them to Renounce Their Faith

In 2019, the CCP issued a number of documents, insisting that great efforts in forced indoctrination and transformation be “fortified” across the country, and that “transformation rate indicators” be implemented at all levels; the forced indoctrination and oppression of CAG Christians thereafter intensified. For instance, in April 2019, a document was issued in Shixi Town, Chongqing Municipality, requiring that the local police station, judicial office, and comprehensive management office carry out forced indoctrination and transformation of CAG Christians within their respective scopes, to “ensure the annual transformation rate does not fall below 90%.”^[25] Aside from public security institutions using torture to interrogate Christians and attempting to forcibly indoctrinate them, the CCP has also established “legal education classes” at the city, county, and township levels to carry out “comprehensive and systematic” forced indoctrination so that Christians will “achieve a transformation in their ideological stance within a short period of time.” A large number of Christians in regions across the country have been subjected to high-intensity interrogations and various means of barbaric torture by the CCP after refusing to be indoctrinated or transformed. Some have even been sentenced to prison or have been put to death extrajudicially. In late 2019, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published a list of 53 CAG prisoners of conscience, among which at least seven were sequestered in forced indoctrination bases where they were subjected to brutal indoctrination.

In an effort to fully transform Christians, the CCP has trained a cohort of abnormally sinister indoctrination “teachers.” In 2019, Cheng Fei, an officer with Public Security Department of Shanxi Province and exposed human rights abuser, identified himself as the backbone of the team indoctrinating CAG Christians, saying he had set up a large number of the courses and had personally carried out forced indoctrination and transformation on over a thousand CAG Christians. Cheng Fei’s modus operandi includes tactics such as inundating “students” with lies and fallacies, depriving them of sleep and food for long periods of time, beating them, electrocuting them, spraying tear gas at them, meting out corporal punishment, and degrading them, all in an effort to coerce them to give up their faith. He has in the past burned a male Christian’s nipples and private parts with cigarettes, and scalded him on the front of his chest and lower body with four pots of boiling water;^[26] one female Christian was driven to jump from a building to her death after more than ten days of forced indoctrination and transformation under Cheng Fei.^[27] In September 2019, 226 CAG Christians in Linfen City, Shanxi Province were arrested, and at least 105 were locked up in Linfen Legal Reeducation Base to undergo forced indoctrination and transformation by Cheng Fei.

In Xinjiang, CAG Christians and Muslims are alike branded by CCP authorities as “extremist forces.” The police go to the homes of all those who have been registered as CAG Christians to harass and arrest them; even octogenarians are not spared. Many have been interned in transformation through education camps and are subjected to brutality for refusing to give up their faith. Some are tormented by being suspended in the air, some are handcuffed to tiger benches where they are electrocuted and beaten, and some are forced to strip naked.^[28] It is impossible for Christians’ family members to learn where their loved ones are being held, and they themselves are subjected to strict monitoring and surveillance by authorities.^[29] Many Christians in areas such as Tacheng Prefecture, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, and Hami City have refused to be transformed and are still being held; it is unknown whether they are dead or alive. In the Korla area a Christian husband and wife were arrested and taken away in the middle of the night; their 3-year-old child has become an orphan.^[30]

2.4 Persecution Remained Severe in 2019, With at Least 19 CAG Christians Persecuted to Death

In 2019, at least 19 CAG Christians were persecuted to death due to the CCP authorities’ mad hunting, arrests, and persecution of CAG Christians. Among them the youngest was 21 and the oldest was 75. Some of them died from the brutal torture they endured while detained; some developed serious illnesses but were still held, and eventually lost their lives when their conditions worsened after being subjected to long-term maltreatment and forced labor; one died from falling off a building when surrounded by police and attempting to escape; some took their own lives after being driven to utter desperation by the endless harassment and pursuit by the CCP; some were persecuted to death by the CCP instigating the masses and their own family to oppress them. The list goes on.

The following is a brief and incomplete summary of some CAG Christians who died in 2019 as a result of persecution:

Table 3: Brief Information of CAG Christians Persecuted to Death in 2019 (Incomplete)

2.5 Over 1,000 CAG Christians Were Sentenced to Prison in 2019, With Twelve Given Heavy Sentences of 10 to 12 Years

According to incomplete figures, at least 1,355 CAG Christians were sentenced on charge of “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” in 2019, for nothing more than religious activities such as gathering together, sharing the gospel, or keeping literature concerning faith in Almighty God at home. This shows a 114% increase compared with the 633 convictions in 2018 that are known to the public (see Figure 1 and Figure 2 for details). Among those sentenced in 2019, 481 were given three or more years and 64 were given seven or more years. In the provinces of Jiangxi and Sichuan, two mid-level leaders in CAG, Yang Meiyun and Chen Ju, were each given 11-year sentences.^[31] In 2019, as documented in the ten court decisions from Xinjiang published on China Judgments Online, there were 117 CAG Christians who had received sentences: 88 had been given sentences of three years or more, accounting for 75.2%; 64 had been given sentences of five years or more, accounting for 54.7%; seven had been given sentences of 10 years or more. As Xinjiang has become a restricted area very strictly monitored by the CCP, data on persecution is very difficult to obtain, so these numbers cannot nearly account for the total number of those sentenced. The European human rights organizations, Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) and the Association for the Defense of Human Rights and Religious Freedom (ADHRRF) have also published information on 4,169 CAG Christians who were detained in 2019. Among them, 3,442 were female, accounting for 83%; 39 were given sentences of ten years or more; 936 had already been held for a year or longer, and what their sentences may be is still unknown.

Note: (1,2] means a prison term greater than 1 year and less than or equal to 2 years, and so on and so forth. The total number of CAG Christians sentenced in 2017 is 244, the number in 2018 is 633, and the number in 2019 is 1,355 (the prison terms of 39 remain unknown).

In 2019, James T. Richardson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, Massimo Introvigne, founder of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), and Rosita Šorytė, president of the International Observatory of Religious Liberty of Refugees (ORLIR), released a joint report stating that they had reached a conclusion from their research into the verdicts of 200 CAG Christians: CAG Christians are convicted and sentenced under Article 300 of China’s Criminal Law for nothing more than peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of belief and freedom of expression. Article 300 of the Criminal Law is the CCP’s secret weapon for its persecution of religious beliefs.^[32]

CAG Christians are still being widely deprived of their right to a fair trial. Two documents issued in 2019 by the local Political and Legal Affairs Commissions in Henan and Jilin provinces demanded increased “supervision and guidance” of lawyers representing cases for CAG Christians and other members of religious groups and to “absolutely not allow human rights lawyers” to enter a not guilty plea on their behalf. On September 12, 18 CAG Christians were sentenced by the court in Fushun County, Zigong City, Sichuan Province for “organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law.” The hearing lasted just 20 minutes before the judge read out the verdict, and the date written on the verdict was August 28, about two weeks before the hearing.^[33]

CAG Christians who were sentenced and imprisoned continued to be largely sent to prison indoctrination facilities where they were further persecuted. In April 2019, the General Office of the CCP Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued a document entitled “Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Prison Work” that made particular mention of ramping up reform efforts for members of religious groups, including CAG Christians: “raise the rate of successful transformation; and solidify the positive results of transformation.”^[34] A great number of CAG Christians have been subjected to brutal, inhuman maltreatment simply for keeping their faith. In March 2019, Zhang Yi*, a CAG Christian in his sixties, was taken to a prison in Zhejiang Province to serve out his sentence. In an effort to compel him to sign the “three statements” (a statement of repentance, a statement of guarantee, and a statement of denouncement and criticism), prison guards forced him to sit for long periods of time every day on a stool with protruding plastic nails. After three months his buttocks were covered with festering sores, and his entire body was in pain; he could hardly squat. The torture lasted for six months, only ending when he had served out his sentence.^[35] Tan Huizhen*, another CAG Christian, was subjected to up to seven months of brutal indoctrination and transformation while serving her prison time. During that time, she was forced to study “transformation” materials drafted by the CCP on a daily basis. She was deprived of food and water, and she could relieve herself only during restricted times. She was subjected to even more torture including being beaten, made to hold painful positions for long periods of time, her nipples were twisted, and she was forced to take psychoactive substances. Since getting out of prison, Tan Huizhen, has been afflicted with unresponsiveness and general disorientation.^[36]

Imprisoned CAG Christians are generally forced to perform 12 to 20 hours per day of unpaid, back-breaking slave labor or even carry out work that is clearly hazardous to the human body with no protection whatsoever. Such work causes them great bodily harm. While serving her sentence in a women’s prison in Yunnan Province, CAG Christian Xiao Yun* was forced to work at least 13 hours every day in a workshop sewing sweaters; the air was full of dust and dark smoke as well as a noxious odor of fabric dye. She was abused and beaten by prison guards over a long period of time in an effort to get her to sign the “three statements” of renouncing her faith. Two years later, Xiao Yun developed pulmonary disease, and after four years it worsened and developed into tuberculosis, yet the prison staff continued to force her to carry out hard slave labor. In 2019 when Xiao Yun was released, she had already sustained damage to her left lung, which had essentially lost its capacity to breathe; she was no longer able to perform any physical work.^[37]

While imprisoned, CAG Christians are widely deprived of their right to medical attention. In 2019 alone, this led to the deaths of at least five believers.

2.6 The CCP Established Lifelong Controls Over CAG Christians and Incited Society to Hate and Discriminate Against Them

On January 9, 2019, the General Office of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China issued a document expressly demanding that anyone documented as a CAG Christian be monitored for life: “there is to be no deregistration.” CCP authorities required low-level government personnel to sign target responsibility statements to crack down on The Church of Almighty God and to carry out the “five-on-one control system” against the members. This is a method of selecting four or five people, one person in charge from their local police station, one leader from their residential community or village, a supervisor at their workplace, and a family member to stay close to the Christian in question and carry out 24-hour surveillance to ensure that they can be summoned at a moment’s notice. Government employees are also required to regularly hold “legal education classes.” A detailed file is to be created for each believer under supervision, indicating his or her ID information, education, transformation progress, evaluation conclusions, and so on.^[38] If a Christian is discovered to have participated in any religious activity, they immediately face arrest and forced indoctrination once again.

This kind of prison-like control is a psychological torment for Christians. Because Zhao Mei*, a CAG Christian in Henan Province, was on record as having hosted Christian gatherings, starting in July 2017, officials stationed locally and village officials began to monitor her, make home visits to question her, and intimidate her; eavesdropping equipment was installed at the entrance to her home. In April 2019, unable to withstand the CCP authorities’ ongoing oppression and harassment any longer, Zhao Mei attempted suicide by drinking pesticides. An emergency medical intervention removed her from life-threatening danger. During her treatment, several village officials went to the hospital to take her photo again; she was so frightened that she pulled out her own IV, held her head in her hands, and cried out. After she was released from the hospital the village officials continued to closely monitor her.^[39] Additionally, Wang Hua*, a Christian from Zaoyang City in Hubei Province, was arrested and held for ten days in July 2015 because of her faith in Almighty God. After her release, CCP police coordinated with local village officials to monitor her and restrict her travel all year round. They frequently visited her at home to harass and intimidate her and would not allow her to practice her faith. She left home and went on the run, after which the village officials continued to pressure her family members and inquire after her whereabouts. Suffering from long-term stress and depression, her breast cancer returned, and she passed away in 2019 after the treatment she received was found to have been ineffective.

The CCP ramped up its “black propaganda” efforts, manipulating the media to fabricate lies and disseminate fake news as well as spreading rumors through public performances, parades, and the construction of village and town propaganda theme parks in order to discredit and slander The Church of Almighty God, effectively “brainwashing” the people. The CCP also increased its suppression of CAG Christians’ family members, stripping them of rights relating to employment, enlisting in the military, or taking the civil service exam, and so on^[40], creating both societal and family pressure to force the Christians to give up their faith. In September, the husband of CAG Christian Wang Miao* in Shangqiu City, Henan Province reported his wife after experiencing pressure from his boss and being deceived by CCP lies. He forced her to sign a “card promising to renounce my faith” and began to frequently subject her to savage beatings, to the point where she lost hearing in one ear. The son of CAG Christian Xiao Xin* from Yongzhou City, Hunan Province was not only deceived by fake news, but was also threatened by a village official who said that if his mother continued to believe in God, her subsistence allowance would be revoked, and the school and work opportunities of three generations of their family would be impacted. He thus began doing everything he could to obstruct Xiao Xin from practicing her faith, and he started abusing her physically and verbally; she was tracked and monitored for up to five years. Hurt and heartbroken and with no way out, she committed suicide in August of 2019 by drinking pesticides at the age of 75. Yan Ping* was a teacher and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God in Liaocheng City, Shandong Province. Police filed for an investigation into her situation because of her faith in Almighty God; her manager at school cooperated with the Public Security Bureau, exerting a great deal of pressure on her for a long period of time in an effort to compel her to renounce her faith. Ultimately, she was driven to drown herself in a lake in September of 2019. After her death, an unsent message was discovered on her phone that said, “I don’t want to implicate my husband and child. I love you both!”

2.7 The CCP Continued to Implement Its “Extradition Project” and Expanded Investigations and Crackdowns on The Church of Almighty God Abroad

In 2019, the CCP expanded the scope of its crackdowns on The Church of Almighty God beyond its own borders. It issued a number of documents demanding the use of “overseas work resources,” combining Internet technology with traditional reconnaissance methods to gain an understanding of The Church of Almighty God’s overseas activities, enter information into their database on CAG’s overseas personnel, and then conduct analyses and develop a strategy for each individual. The CCP continued exerting pressure on the governments of democratic countries, infiltrated the networks of CAG overseas and launched media attacks against it, crafting and disseminating lies, coercing members’ relatives to go abroad “looking for lost relatives,” and manufacturing public outcries, all in an attempt to get all CAG Christians extradited back to China.^[41]

An inside source revealed that, once every few months, the CCP sends an emissary to the South Korean government to request a name list of CAG refugees. It has also taken screenshots of actors in every film made by CAG Christians and posted them online to incite people to report their identities.

In 2019, staff of various government agencies such as the Ministry of State Security,^[42] the Public Security Department, the Public Security Bureau, and the National Security Brigade continued to lure and coerce relatives of CAG Christians who have fled to South Korea to travel to Korea to participate in staged demonstrations organized by O Myung-ok, a Communist sympathizer. Between July 22 and 24, O Myung-ok led more than 20 family members of CAG Christians who were from Shandong, Henan, Hebei, and other provinces, to stage fake “spontaneous demonstrations” at the South Korean Immigration Office, the premises of the CAG in Onsu, and at the Blue House, where they shouted slogans such as “China has never harmed them, return the fake refugees.” This was staged to slander and discredit The Church of Almighty God, to personally attack the Christians, and to manufacture an artificial public outcry in an effort to apply pressure to the South Korean government to have CAG refugees extradited to China. Meanwhile, 30 refugees who are members of The Church of Almighty God were holding a press conference at the Blue House, recounting the facts of the persecution they had suffered under the CCP. A number of foreign media outlets reported on this, exposing and condemning the CCP’s extradition scheme. The CCP has initiated 12 fake protests in South Korea since 2016 in order to implement its “extradition project;” they have all ended in failure. In the summer of 2019, some relatives of CAG Christians who had fled to Europe and Japan were subjected to CCP harassment as well,^[43] as the CCP expanded the scope of “looking for lost relatives” as part of its extradition project to include Europe and other countries in Asia.

In 2019, not only did the CCP court and persuade 37 countries including Myanmar and the Philippines to support their oppression in Xinjiang,^[44] but its sinister hand also stretched into Myanmar and the Philippines toward the CAG Christians there. In early December, the government of Myanmar’s Wa State began closely investigating CAG Christians while also disseminating lies about CAG that had been fabricated by the CCP. It threatened those Christians discovered through investigation to renounce their faith or else face severe punishment.

3. The International Community Continued to Take Note of CAG’s Persecution Crisis

In 2019, the reality of the brutal suppression and persecution suffered by The Church of Almighty God at the hands of the CCP government aroused more concern from the United Nations as well as from non-governmental organizations, reporters, and human rights activists from countries including the United States, Canada, Italy, Belgium, Lithuania, and South Korea. Some government agencies in democratic countries adopted active measures to provide assistance for CAG refugees seeking asylum who had fled China.

On March 4, 2019, members of various religious groups and human rights organizations held a press conference in the U.S. Congress announcing the official establishment of the Coalition to Advance Religious Freedom in China (CARFC). Samuel D. Brownback, Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), also attended. The Coalition’s mission is to urge the U.S. government to take strong action on the CCP’s suppression of religious freedoms. As The Church of Almighty God is a coalition member, the facts surrounding the savage persecution it is subjected to by the CCP gained the interest of other participants and the media.^[45]

On July 15, 2019, during the U.S. second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, the Coalition to Advance Religious Freedom in China held a side event. Zou Demei, a CAG Christian, told the story of her 14 years on the run in China and having to evade arrest, simply because of her faith in Almighty God; she also spoke of the arrests of her mother and other Christians who were persecuted to death. Zou Demei escaped to the United States in January 2017, and on March 18, 2019, based on the persecution she had suffered, the U.S. gave approval for her to remain in the country.^[46]

On July 23, 2019, multiple non-governmental organizations including the Coordination of the Associations and the People for Freedom of Conscience (CAP-LC), Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), the European Inter-Religious Forum for Religious Freedom (EIFRF), and the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) as well as a number of academics, religious leaders, lawyers, and human rights activists organized the European Freedom of Religion or Belief Roundtable. A joint letter was sent to all members of the European Parliament as well as to the Ambassadors to the EU from all EU member states making an appeal to focus on the asylum applications of CAG Christians.

On December 11, 2019 in Vilnius, Lithuania, 29 members of the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania and one member of the European Parliament sent a joint letter to the Chinese embassy calling on the Chinese government to put a stop to its persecution of religious groups, including The Church of Almighty God.^[47]

As of the end of December 2019, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has published a list of 65 prisoners of conscience in China, including pastors of house churches, Uyghur Muslims, Buddhists and others. 53 out of 65 are members of the CAG.^[48]

In January 2020, Massimo Introvigne, Italian sociologist of religions and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), released an academic work, a book entitled Inside The Church of Almighty God, based on his interviews with CAG Christians as well as CCP police and government officials; the English version was published by Oxford University Press. In it, he stressed that The Church of Almighty God is the most persecuted religious movement in China and, whenever its members are extradited to China, they face arrest, long-term imprisonment, or even worse fates.^[49]

To help the refugees from The Church of Almighty God, in 2019 the National Commission for the Right to Asylum at the Italian Ministry of the Interior distributed a brochure to all the Territorial Commissions with updated information on the CAG, and introduced lessons on China’s persecution in the courses training new members of the Commissions; in March and July 2019, they produced two new COI (Country of Origin Information) documents, specifically about The Church of Almighty God. In 2019, the acceptance rate of CAG Christians’ asylum applications in Italy increased by 8% and the general acceptance rate of asylum applications for CAG Christians abroad reached 12.7%, an annual increase 4.26% higher than the previous year.

However, due to the large quantity of fake news produced by the CCP to frame and discredit The Church of Almighty God, combined with its nonstop diplomatic, political, and economic tactics to apply pressure on other countries, many CAG Christians’ applications for asylums have been halted. As of December 2019, the acceptance rate for CAG Christians in France was just 8.6%; out of 444 applicants, 403 were rejected. Among them 236 received departure orders, and several Christians whose applications were denied have been arrested and taken to detention centers where they are facing deportation procedures. In Switzerland, 33 CAG Christians applied for asylum; 29 were denied, and 25 received departure orders; three were forcibly repatriated to China, whose whereabouts are still unclear, and it is unknown whether they are alive or dead. In democratic Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, the acceptance rate is 0. Out of the 1,008 asylum seekers in South Korea, not a single one has been approved to date, and 179 have received departure orders. Out of the 269 asylum seekers in Japan, none has been approved to date. CAG Christians are in a perilous situation; once extradited, they face arrest and imprisonment by the CCP, as well as brutal torture, and even death.

4. Conclusion

The fundamental reason for the CCP’s frenzied suppression and persecution of religious belief is that the CCP has by its very nature extreme loathing for God and for the truth. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, the founder of the Communist Party, says, “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” When it took power, the CCP began to manically suppress and brutally persecute religious beliefs. Since the appearance and work of Almighty God in 1991, the CCP has been brutally persecuting The Church of Almighty God. In 2000, Jia Chunwang, former head of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, ordered that The Church of Almighty God must be “destroyed without making a sound.” The CCP has also made this threat regarding CAG: “Troops will not be withdrawn until the purge is complete.” The CCP’s attitude toward the arrests and sentencing of CAG Christians has been expressed as, “Beating them to death is nothing. If they die, it counts as suicide.” They implement terrorist extermination policies such as “physical destruction and psychological sabotage,” wantonly trampling on and stripping the Christians of their freedom of belief, their right to life, and other basic human rights. In 2020, the CCP will continue to intensify its efforts and expand the scope of its persecution in an effort to thoroughly eliminate and wipe out The Church of Almighty God. The conditions for millions of CAG Christians to exercise their rights to practice their faith and merely survive will worsen. In the face of the CCP’s mad suppression and persecution as well as the potential peril of being forced to return to China from their recipient countries, CAG Christians are left with no choice but to publicize all of the facts that can be gathered regarding their persecution, and to provide the relevant data and documentation to the international community and human rights organizations in an effort to garner support.

Annex: 21 Selected Typical Cases in 2019

1) The CCP Subjects CAG Christians to Extrajudicial Killings

Case 1

Ren Cuifang, female, born in 1988, was a resident of Karamay City in Xinjiang. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2011. On December 22, 2018, she was arrested by the police because of her belief in God and died after 12 days of brutal torture. She was only 30 years old. Her family members were taken to the mortuary where they viewed her remains. The skin around her eyes was blue and purple, there was a hand-sized, dark purple and black mark on the left side of her chest, and there were blue and purple circular marks of varying sizes on the skin of all four limbs. A large burn scar was on her thigh. There were lacerations with blood marks on her wrists and heels, and the toenail on her left big toe had come off. It was very clear that she had been cruelly tortured to death, but the police completely denied responsibility and threatened Ren’s family not to spread the news. Her family was left without recourse.^[50]

2) The CCP Deprives CAG Christians of Their Right to Life

Case 2

Yu Xiangju, female, born in 1951, was a native of Ankang City in Shaanxi Province. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2002. Because of her faith, on June 27, 2018, Yu was arrested by police officers with the Public Security Sub-bureau of Hanbing District, Ankang City, Shaanxi Province. The police were well aware that she suffered from serious medical conditions such as dangerously high blood pressure, a heart condition, a cerebral infarction, and critically low potassium levels, but they still held her in custody, and her blood pressure medication was confiscated as the moment she entered the detention center. The police would only allow her to take an unknown pill one day, which had no effect at all. The police deprived her of potassium supplements and ignored her request to inform her family members that she needed medication, which caused her to suffer from a serious potassium deficiency and resulted in the worsening of her heart condition and high blood pressure, as well as a recurrence of her cerebral infarction. Due to the serious delay in treatment, she became incurable and passed away on March 29, 2019.^[51]

Case 3

Liu Jun*, male, born in 1998, was a resident of Jiangxi Province. He joined The Church of Almighty God in 2015. He was arrested one day in July 2018 by local National Security Brigade officers while attending a church gathering. The police were aware that he suffered from kidney disease, but they still interrogated and intimidated him, thereby causing his condition to worsen. Fearing that he would die in custody and that they would be held responsible, the police allowed him to be released on bail pending trial. After that, the police continued to call him in repeatedly, which caused him to live in fear every single day, and his condition never improved. In April 2019, disregarding his serious condition, the police once again arrested and detained him. During his detention, though they were aware of his deteriorating health, as he had experienced swelling all over his body and difficulty breathing, they refused to release him. This caused a rapid decline in his health that led to his condition becoming uremia with the complication of heart disease. It was not until then that the police allowed his release on bail pending trial. Due to the delay in receiving treatment, Liu Jun passed away on August 10 of the same year at just 21 years of age.^[52]

Case 4

Zhenyu*, female, born in 1981, was a resident of Liaoning Province. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2007 and was arrested in late June 2018 as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s “Operation Thunder.” While detained, though the police were well aware that her incisions after undergoing surgery for breast cancer were not healed, they still demanded that she sit upright on a hard board with her legs crossed from dawn to dusk, for nine hours, along with the other prisoners. She was also required to memorize and recite prison rules and to stand at attention for long periods of time. This torment led to attacks of acute pain at least four or five times a day, which always left her in agony. The chief of the detention center paid no heed and instead forced her to continue sitting cross-legged. After seven days of such treatment, the disciplinary officer had Zhenyu and the other prisoners take on very hard labor. That, combined with the very poor food available in the detention center, caused Zhenyu’s breast cancer to take a sharp turn for the worse, despite the fact that her condition had been improving. She passed away from illness in April 2019.^[53]

Case 5

Zhang Meijuan*, female, born in 1973, was a resident of Zhejiang Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. On July 2, 2017, she was arrested and detained by local officers with the National Security Brigade due to her faith in God. She was maltreated and subjected to cold-water showers while in custody. Though she had originally been in good health, she developed a lung disease and a persistent cough. In March 2019, Zhang Meijuan began to feel congestion in her chest and intense bodily pain, but the police would only give her analgesics. They frequently scolded her and forbade her from speaking to the point where she began to suffer extreme psychological distress. In May 2019, a local court gave her a heavy sentence of three years and six months for “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” as well as a fine of RMB 100,000 (about USD 14,500). On August 28, Zhang Meijuan was sent to a women’s prison to serve her sentence, after which her physical condition continued to worsen. On September 10, she was diagnosed at a local cancer hospital with late-stage lung cancer and was transferred to a provincial prison hospital, yet still she was not released. It was not until September 18 when her condition became critical that the police allowed her family members to begin procedures for medical parole. While hospitalized, Zhang Meijuan passed in and out of consciousness and the right side of her body became paralyzed. She passed away on November 8 due to the ongoing deterioration in her condition.^[54]

Case 6

Liu Hua*, male, born in 1950, was a resident of Guyuan City in Ningxia. He joined The Church of Almighty God in 2004. On December 8, 2012, Liu Hua was arrested by the CCP police for spreading the gospel. Trying to force Liu Hua to point out the house of another Christian, the police made him stay out in the minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit cold for over two hours. The freezing cold and bone-chilling wind left his entire body stiff. After returning to the police station, two policemen suddenly pulled his arms behind his back and violently jerked his hands and arms in an upward motion, which caused an acute strain on his right shoulder. As a consequence, he constantly felt an excruciating pain in his right arm, right shoulder and his knees. The doctor examined him and confirmed that he had developed severe rheumatoid arthritis, which later triggered several complications and left him bedridden. During this period, personnel from the county’s judicial, prosecutorial and law enforcement departments continued to frequently harass and threaten him at his home, causing Liu extreme emotional stress, which aggravated his condition even further and eventually led to his death on March 5, 2019.^[55]

Case 7

Cheng Xiangyu, female, born in 1965, was a resident of Jincheng City, Shanxi Province. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2012. In the middle of the night of November 15, 2018, she was arrested at her rented home for practicing her faith by several officers from the Jincheng City Public Security Bureau, the city National Security Brigade, and the local police station. While detained, she developed a fever. Others in her cell repeatedly reported her condition, but the prison guards paid no attention whatsoever. Combined with the poor meals and the requirement of maintaining a sitting position day after day, her health deteriorated dramatically. On January 11, 2019 she was already emaciated with sallow complexion, spoke weakly and with difficulty, could not stand steadily, and needed someone to support her while walking. Disregarding her critical condition, the police transferred her to the Gaoping Transformation Through Education Center to forcefully indoctrinate and transform her, where her medical condition grew even more serious. Due to the police having delayed treatment, she died on January 13 in the hospital after emergency medical measures failed to revive her.^[56]

Case 8

Li Sulian, female, born in 1963, lived on the 12th floor of the Wanding Square Community in Yucheng County, Shangqiu City, Henan Province. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2000. In early May of 2019, she was reported to the police for evangelizing. The police officers went through the residential community where she lived with her photo trying to collect information on her religious belief. On May 7, Li Sulian was surrounded at her home by officers from Maqiao Town Police Station in Yongcheng City. In order to escape arrest and brutal torture by the CCP, while making a daring attempt to escape out the 12th floor window, she sadly plunged to her death, hitting a third-floor balcony. Her family was devastated and full of indignation after this tragedy, and they tried to seek justice for her death. Afraid that the issue would cause problems for them, and that it would incite public anger, the involved police station denied any responsibility, using the excuse that they had gone to the wrong address to arrest the wrong person. They compensated her family only approximately RMB 60,000 (about USD 8,700) for the funeral expenses. The family was left without legal recourse.^[57]

Case 9

Xiao Xin*, female, born in 1944, was a resident of Yongzhou City in Hunan Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. In 2014, the Chinese Communist Party concocted the infamous McDonald’s Murder Case to slander and discredit The Church of Almighty God. Xiao Xin’s son was not initially opposed to his mother’s faith, but after being taken in by the CCP’s rumors, he began doing everything he could to obstruct her, following her to gathering places and threatening to report her to the police if she continued to practice her faith. He would also frequently find fault with her, beat her and verbally abuse her. The village party secretary visited and warned her son, saying, “If your mom keeps believing in God, her subsistence allowance will be cancelled, the school won’t let your daughter teach, and your son won’t get into college.” After hearing these words, her son opposed her faith more strongly. In one incident, only because Xiao Xin was found praying to God, her son grabbed her by the hair, flung her out of the door, and smacked her across the face twice. Xiao Xin was very deeply hurt. Her son also maintained long-term surveillance over her and threatened to break her legs if she continued to believe in God. In August 2019, Xiao Xin, unable to bear her son’s persecution any longer, drank pesticides and passed away in bitterness.

Case 10

Cheng Dongzhu, female, born in 1955, was a resident of Hubei Province’s Wuhan City and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. In August 2018, she learned from her son, who was working in a public security agency, that the CCP was about to arrest a Christian. She rushed to report this to the church so that the person in question could escape arrest and persecution by the CCP. Soon after that, the police visited Cheng Dongzhu in her store to investigate her. From then on, she was closely monitored. Many Christians who had approached her were followed and arrested. Whenever she left home for church meetings, she would be spied on by people planted by the CCP, causing her to live in fear every day and to lose more and more weight. Around July 2019, Cheng Dongzhu told another Christian that the CCP police already knew that the previous year’s arrest operation had been a failure because her son had leaked the information. She said that her son had been put under pressure and ordered to find and locate the Christian who had got away the year before, otherwise he would lose his job, and her grandson would not even be able to go to university. Cheng Dongzhu thus suffered incredible stress, fearing that her family would be implicated. On July 23, she gave all of her faith-related materials to another Christian for safekeeping, saying that a major issue had come up at home. That same evening, approximately 20 police officers were stationed at the entrance to her store chasing people away, while some officers kept wandering along the roadsides nearby. What happened to Cheng Dongzhu that night is still unknown. A little after 4 a.m. on July 24, Cheng Dongzhu jumped into a lake and drowned herself, unable to further tolerate the CCP’s harassment and persecution. Her body was pulled from the water at around 1 a.m. on July 25.^[58]

3) The CCP Subjects CAG Christians to Torture and Indoctrination

Case 11

Tan Huizhen*, female, born in 1988, is a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. On July 2, 2017, she was arrested and detained for her belief in Almighty God by the police in Zhejiang Province. In January 2019, she was sentenced by the court to two years and three months on the charge of “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” and was afterward sent to a prison to serve her sentence. Once in prison, the officials there isolated her and subjected her to forced indoctrination and transformation, requiring her to watch six hours of videos a day that blasphemed God and slandered The Church of Almighty God. She was compelled to take notes while watching these videos, and afterward, she was forced to write a reflection, and in the evenings make ten hand copies of ideological and theoretical materials. If Tan Huizhen’s performance of these tasks did not meet the prison officials’ wishes even slightly, she would be harshly reprimanded, insulted, and subjected to corporal punishment.

In an attempt to compel Tan Huizhen to sign “four statements” of renouncing her faith (a statement of confession, a statement of repentance, a statement of severing ties, and a statement of denouncement and criticism), the prison guards instructed several malicious prisoners to torment her using a variety of despicable tactics and only allowed her a few bites of food a day. She was not given water to drink during the day, and for several hours each day she was forced to stand and to sit at attention. They poured water and urine over her head, restricted the time she was allowed to relieve herself, and they pinched and twisted the skin on her arms. They later attempted to force her to copy out materials blaspheming God; when she refused, they pressed her down onto the ground and wrote blasphemous things all over her face and neck, after which they savagely dug the tip of a pen into her fingers until they drew blood.

At one point, in another effort to force Tan Huizhen to write something blaspheming God, a prisoner held her head down and twisted her left arm behind her back, and then she pressed her foot into Tan’s back while another prisoner forced Tan’s right hand open to hold the pen. As she struggled, a prisoner forced her left pinky finger up, lifted up her left arm, and used the tip of the pen to stab at the wounds on her hand while also tearing out large amounts of her hair. Tan Huizhen was in so much pain that she cried out, but the other prisoners just stuffed a floor towel into her mouth and continued to torture her over and over. For the following ten days the prisoners continued to torment her this way every day, causing her such misery that she would sometimes bang her head hard against her bed board until her lips split and blood flowed from her mouth. It was only at this point that the prisoners would stop. Combined with the deprivation of food and water, Tan Huizhen was tortured to the point of utter depletion; she was on the brink of despair and collapse, and she lost over 20 pounds.

Two months later, Tan Huizhen was transferred to another prison district for intensive indoctrination and transformation. Malicious prisoners ordered her to maintain a sitting position on a wooden bench with both legs and heels close together and feet splayed out, both hands placed on her knees, and her back very straight. They also had her sit and stand with two volumes of the largest dictionary available pressed between her hands. They did this for four to five hours every day, and the torment continued for one week.

In an effort to thoroughly break down Tan Huizhen’s resolve, the prison guards forced her to take two tablets of psychotropic medication every day for about ten days. They later employed other brutal torture methods such as using iron clamps on her ears, putting Menthocamphorate (cooling ointment) in her eyes, and forcefully twisting and pulling on her nipples. By the time she had served out her sentence, Tan Huizhen had been so tortured by the CCP that she was less responsive, her memory had deteriorated, and she was generally disoriented. After she was released, the police continued their long-term surveillance and indoctrination, demanding that she report to the police station once every three months and that she undergo five years of transformation training in the judicial office. Tan Huizhen has entirely lost all personal freedom.^[59]

Case 12

Zhang Yi*, male, born in 1956, is a resident of Zhejiang Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. On July 2, 2017, Zhang Yi was arrested and detained by the local police for believing in Almighty God. While detained, the police attempted to force him to give up information on the church and demanded that he sign documents drawn up by the CCP officials. After he refused, they began to torture him, forcing him to sit on a stool with 24 protruding plastic nails from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. every day: He had to sit with his back straight, hands on his knees, his head up and his chest out without moving. After this torture had gone on for over a month, the broken skin on Zhang Yi’s buttocks began to fester, leaving him in so much pain that he trembled constantly and could not fall asleep at night.

The morning of September 25, 2018, the police repeatedly over-tightened handcuffs on Zhang Yi to torment him for refusing to sign a document, to the point where he lost consciousness. Deep marks from the handcuffs were left on his wrists. Then in November he was taken to an indoctrination base.

In January, 2019, Zhang Yi was sentenced to two years and three months in prison and given a fine of RMB 10,000 (about USD 1,450) on the charge of “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” by the court, after which he was taken to a prison in Zhejiang Province to serve his sentence.

Once he was imprisoned, prison guards arranged for a particularly violent prisoner to keep watch over him and he was once again forced to sit upright on a stool of plastic nails for long periods of time; they also forced him to memorize and recite prison rules. After three months he once again developed festering sores all over his buttocks and even found it difficult to squat while using the toilet. Every bone in his body hurt.

Others were scheduled specifically to keep watch over Zhang Yi every night, and they never took half a step away from his side. He was not permitted to speak with the other prisoners. Over the six months of being guarded this way, Zhang Yi became extremely depressed and felt very low.

In early October 2019, Zhang Yi had served his full sentence and was released. Due to the inhuman torture he suffered while imprisoned, he developed sciatica as well as rheumatoid arthritis, and became very sensitive to the cold. As of now, the CCP continues to monitor and harass him, leaving him in a state of depression and psychological torment.^[60]

Case 13

Xiao Yun*, female, born in 1968, is a resident of Yunnan Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. On December 14, 2012, while delivering church books in Yunnan Province’s Kaiyuan City, Xiao Yun was arrested and detained by Kaiyuan City Public Security Bureau officers. In September 2013 she was given a heavy seven-year sentence on the charge of “organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” by a court, after which she was taken to a women’s prison in Yunnan Province to serve her sentence.

In prison, Xiao Yun was assigned to work in a workshop sewing sweaters; the air was full of dust and dark smoke as well as a noxious odor of fabric dye. She was forced to work at least 13 hours every day. From the very beginning she felt dizzy and nauseous, and after three months she began to have difficulty breathing.

The prison officials used all sorts of cruel tactics to torture Xiao Yun in an attempt to force her to sign the “three statements” (a statement of confession, a statement of severing ties, and a statement of denouncement and criticism) to forsake her faith. At one point they locked her into a four-meter-square room for an entire month within which she had to eat, drink, and relieve herself. She was frequently kept starving; the prison guards only provided her with a single bed covering and made her sleep on a cement slab. After coming out of the confinement room, a female prison guard dragged her into a place without any surveillance and then began frantically stomping on Xiao Yun’s right foot toes and grinding them with her high-heeled shoes until they were crushed. Blood was seeping out from her shoes and she left tracks of blood everywhere she went. All of her right toes turned black and blue. After one unsuccessful attempt to force her to sign the “three statements,” a prison guard suddenly gave her a vicious kick on her right side, leaving her breathless and with great pain (this caused a back injury which causes her pain to this day). She was unable to catch her breath for a long time. Afterward, continuing in their attempts to get her to sign the “three statements,” the prison guards would stop at nothing to torment her, once not allowing her to wash herself for an entire month. Sometimes she would have to stand watch for an entire night, and they would often reduce her food rations, instruct other prisoners to beat her, and punish her by making her stand exposed in the scorching sun until her face was so burned that she lost a layer of skin.

Xiao Yun became physically weaker and weaker as a result of the year-round back-breaking labor and corporal punishment she was subjected to in prison. Originally 46 kg (101 lb), she wasted away to just 32 kg (71 lb). She was found to have a lung infection in 2016 and developed a persistent cough, but was still forced to do large amounts of labor. Her condition worsened and became tuberculosis in 2018, but the prison authorities still kept her imprisoned until May 2019, when she was finally released. After returning home Xiao Yun went to a hospital for a physical exam, where the doctor told her that since her tuberculosis had not been treated in time, pathological changes had occurred in her left lung. It had sustained so much damage that it had basically lost respiratory capabilities and there was no way to treat it. She has been left with lifelong disabilities.^[61]

Case 14

Li Fang*, female, born in 1958, is a resident of Zhejiang Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. In 2004, she was arrested by the police because of her faith in Almighty God and then subjected to cruel torture including the “flying eagle.” Officers took shifts to torment her around the clock. On July 2, 2017, she was again arrested and detained by the police for attending a worship gathering and believing in God. In January 2019, she was sentenced to two years and three months and fined RMB 10,000 (about USD 1,450) by the court for “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law.” She was then sent to prison to serve her sentence.

As soon as she entered the prison, the guards dispatched two other prisoners to monitor Li Fang and to carry out indoctrination and transformation. They forced her to maintain a sitting posture, having her sit on a small stool just 20 cm high for many hours, without allowing her to move. Li Fang already suffered from sciatica as well as a lumbar disc hernia; that kind of torment left her midsection terribly sore and in unspeakable pain. Seeing that she still would not give in, the prison guards ordered two other prisoners who were even more brutal to further torture Li Fang. They ordered her to stand up straight and hold two heavy hard-cover books (6 cm thick) under her armpits with her hands tight against her legs. The moment a book fell to the ground, they would force water down her throat. Those prisoners also attempted to force her to write things blaspheming God, and when she refused to comply, they stabbed her right hand with the tip of a pen and slammed it against a table; her hand swelled up like a balloon on the spot and started bleeding. She was in such pain that she fell down under the table, but she still refused to write anything blaspheming God. The prisoners were so enraged that they abused her and violently smacked her across the sides of her face. That night, the prisoners covered the security camera with a quilt, pushed Li Fang down onto the floor, and then started stomping on her ribs. Li Fang cried out from the excruciating pain and she suffered injuries to her chest from being stomped on. She lay on the floor, unable to get up, and she experienced pain while breathing. The prison guards later warned her not to tell anyone about the corporal punishment she had been subjected to. Li Fang was also forced to perform labor by the prison guards, in the form of ironing clothing. She felt a pain in her chest every time she had to pick up an iron. It was only after two months that she began to notice a very slight improvement in her condition.

Li Fang served out her sentence in October 2019 and was released, but she is still under very close surveillance.^[62]

Case 15

Liu Zongxian* (male, 55 years old) and his wife Wei Shuyun* (54 years old) are residents of Xinmi City in Henan Province and Christians of The Church of Almighty God. On May 30, 2019, the couple were arrested by seven police officers for their belief in Almighty God and then forcibly taken to the local police station. To extract information on the church, the police subjected them to cruel torture. They smacked Liu Zongxian repeatedly across the face, viciously kicked him in the lower back, used an iron bar to club his toes, and forced him to take off his clothes and kneel on an iron rod. After that, they forced Liu to stay in a room with the thermostat adjusted to a freezing cold temperature. Liu Zongxian was tortured so much that he suffered from two broken ribs (later diagnosed to be fractures in the 10th and 11th ribs of his left side) and he is now unable to perform hard physical labor. Wei Shuyun was also tortured after being arrested. The police officers stomped on her toes and insteps, grinding them into the floor with their heels, and they slapped her in the face with a ruler and a rolled newspaper, causing her lips to bleed and her face to swell. Then they twisted her arms, handcuffing her behind her back, with one arm twisted up over her shoulder and one twisted from below, and put an iron rod into the handcuffs, lifting and pulling it repeatedly, which left her in severe pain. After their release, their mobile phones had locators forcibly installed so that they could be kept under surveillance.^[63]

4) The CCP Sets Hefty Bounties for CAG Christians

Case 16

Xu Qingxia and her husband Ding Renxin were both born in 1975; they lived in Fengmao Town, Shanting District, Zaozhuang City in Shandong Province, and are Christians of The Church of Almighty God. In 2014, as a result of the CCP concocting the McDonald’s Murder Case to fabricate charges against The Church of Almighty God and inciting the masses to report Christians, someone reported them to the police station for their faith; they subsequently fled their home and went on the run. Over the course of five years, village cadres repeatedly visited Xu’s parents to inquire after their whereabouts. The CCP police showed photographs of them to Christians that had already been arrested, asking them to identify the couple. The police also said that Xu and her husband had been listed as wanted on a website of at-large criminals and slandered them, saying they had abandoned their children and that they refused to take care of their parents. In April 2019, Ding Renxin became paralyzed on his left side due to a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. When he risked visiting a hospital for treatment on November 26, he was discovered through facial recognition with a high-definition camera used by the CCP, then arrested and detained. On December 17, the Shanting Branch of Zaozhuang City Public Security Bureau published a RMB 10,000 (about USD 1,450) reward online for the apprehension of Xu Qingxia. When she thinks of how she and her husband have been listed as wanted for years only for their belief in God, how their home has been torn apart, how her husband was arrested when he even lacked full bladder and bowel control, and about how there has been no news of him since, Xu Qingxia feels as though a knife is being driven into her heart.^[64]

Case 17

Zhang Yanling, female, born in 1968, is a resident of Jining City of Shandong Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. In June of 2018, the CCP arrested Zhang’s mother who was in her seventies for her role as the custodian of the church’s books and sentenced her to 4 years in prison. Several days later, after failing to arrest Zhang Yanling, the CCP arrested Zhang’s son, and her octogenarian mother-in-law. On September 4, 2019, Sishui County Public Security Bureau publicly announced that they had put out a cash reward of RMB 5,000 to 10,000 (about USD 725 to 1,450) for information leading to Zhang’s arrest. They also advertised the notice on Qilu TV as well as on the Qilu Evening News and set up a WeChat group for reporting information. The aim of all this was to incite the public to report any sightings of Zhang Yanling to the police. Zhang is currently still in forced exile. She dares not visit her mother in prison and is unable to go home and help take care of her mother-in-law, much less is she able to reunite with her son. This has all caused her immense suffering and hardship.^[65]

Case 18

Cui Huihui, female, born in 1985, a resident of Liaocheng City in Shandong Province, became a member of The Church of Almighty God in 2003. In that same year, at only 18 years of age, Cui Huihui was arrested and tortured by the CCP for spreading the gospel. The police stamped and ground on the toes of her left foot, and paraded her and some male convicts through the streets to deliberately publicly shame her. Cui finally obtained her release after 85 days of detention. In 2013, she was once again detained for half a month for spreading the gospel. After she was released, the village party secretary took the police officers to her home and ordered that she must regularly report to the police station and give up her faith. She had to flee from home and go into hiding. In November, 2013, Cui’s father was arrested by the CCP for his belief in God and sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison. In June, 2019, Cui’s little sister was arrested by the CCP for believing in God. At present, she is still being detained. On August 20, 2019, the Chiping County Public Security Bureau in Liaocheng City posted a notice of a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of several wanted suspects on the Bureau’s WeChat account. The rewards totaled RMB 200,000 (about USD 29,000) and public warrants were issued for 40 suspects. Cui Huihui is among the suspects listed. The CCP’s persecution tore this Christian family apart and made them unable to return home.^[66]

Case 19

Sun Lianhu, male, born in 1967, and his wife Zhang Yuchun, born in 1966, are residents of Liaocheng City in Shandong Province and Christians belonging to The Church of Almighty God. In 2013, Sun Lianhu and his wife were reported to the police by some malicious person for their belief in God, and this report was recorded by the Chiping County Public Security Bureau. On June 4, 2014, three police officers from Chiping County Public Security Bureau in Liaocheng City as well as from the Boping Town Police Station charged into Sun’s home. They seized several faith-related books and pamphlets used for spreading the gospel but failed to arrest the couple. After this incident, the police began to try to track down the couple, who were forced to flee their home. Afterward, the CCP police repeatedly visited Sun’s parents to interrogate and harass them, and search their house. The local Public Security Bureau put out a warrant for the arrest of Sun Lianhu and his wife and cancelled their medical insurance. During their time in exile, they were unable to make contact with their son, much less return home to look after their elderly and ailing parents. This caused them profound suffering. On August 20, 2019, the Chiping County Public Security Bureau publicly announced online that they had put out a cash reward of RMB 4,000 (about USD 580) for information leading to the arrest of Sun Lianhu and his wife to incite people to report to the police about their whereabouts. To this day, Sun and his wife are unable to return home.^[67]

5) The CCP Seizes Christians’ Personal Assets

Case 20

Wang Fang*, female, 54 years old, is a resident of Shandong Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. On the morning of July 11, 2019, five officers from the National Security Brigade stormed into Wang Fang’s home and forcibly arrested her. That same afternoon they escorted her back to her home where they conducted a search and found her personal belongings including RMB 270,000 (about USD 39,150) in cash as well as RMB 40,000 (about USD 5,800) worth of gold and jewelry; the total value was approximately RMB 310,000 (about USD 45,000). The police attempted to coerce Wang Fang into saying that the assets belonged to the church, desiring to misappropriate them, but she resolutely insisted that they were her own personal property. Seeing that she was unwilling to cooperate, they escorted her to a detention center. On August 22, some of her family members posted bail for Wang Fang, but as she was about to leave, the police warned her that she would not be permitted to leave the city for another year, and if it was found that she was continuing to practice her faith, she would immediately be re-arrested. The police still have not returned the confiscated personal property belonging to Wang Fang.

Case 21

Qin Meijuan*, female, 53 years old, is a resident of Shandong Province and a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. Due to her faith and her general affairs work within the church, she was arrested after the police had tracked her for four months using advanced technology. On November 1, 2019, more than ten police officers burst into Qin Meijuan’s home and arrested her. They then raided her house and found RMB 200,000 (about USD 29,000) in personal funds as well as some gold and silver jewelry. Despite the fact that others with knowledge of the situation testified in person that the assets found in her home consisted entirely of hard-earned money from her daughter who was working abroad, the police insisted on seizing it, labeling it as “illegal gains.” A provincial Public Security Department employee said, “If you penalize believers in Almighty God to the point of bankruptcy, they won’t be able to practice their faith anymore.” Qin Meijuan is still being detained to this day.

6) The CCP Arbitrarily Detains and Imprisons CAG Christians

According to incomplete statistics, at least 1,355 CAG Christians were sentenced for “using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law” in 2019, for nothing more than religious activities such as gathering together, sharing the gospel, or keeping literature of faith at home. 64 of them were even sentenced to seven years or more. Please refer to the table below for details:

Table 4: Information of CAG Christians Sentenced to 7 years or More in 2019

1 Ye Lan. Beijing House Churches Under Escalating Attack. Bitter Winter. May 17, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/beijing-house-churches-under-escalating-attack/

2 Ryan Fahey. China will rewrite the Bible and the Quran to 'reflect socialist values' amid crackdown on Muslim Uighur minority. Daily Mail. December 24, 2019.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7824541/China-rewrite-Bible-Quran-reflect-socialist-values.html

3 Wang Zhicheng. New administrative measures for religious groups: total submission to the Chinese Communist Party. AsiaNews. December 31, 2019. http://www.asianews.it/news-en/New-administrative-measures-for-religious-groups:-total-submission-to-the-Chinese-Communist-Party-%E2%80%8B-48919.html

4 Katsuji Nakazawa. US Trade Demands Have China Fearful Of “Color Revolutions.” Nikkei. February 14, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/US-trade-demands-have-China-fearful-of-color-revolutions

5 Steven Lee Myers. A Crackdown on Islam Is Spreading Across China. New York Times. September 21, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/world/asia/china-islam-crackdown.html

6 Xiaoshan.《习治下中国不容上帝字眼　安徒生童话也遭敏感词删砍》[China Disallows All God-Related Words Under Xi Jinping’s Rule: Hans Christian Andersen Fairies Censored for Sensitive Terms]. RFI. May 28, 2019.

http://www.rfi.fr/cn/中国/20190528-习治下中国不容上帝字眼-安徒生童话也遭敏感词删砍

7 Massimo Introvigne. CCP’s Plans to Install a False Dalai Lama Exposed. Central Tibetan Administration. October 5, 2019. https://tibet.net/ccps-plans-to-install-a-false-dalai-lama-exposed/

8 Paul Murano. Chinese Catholics Forced To Replace Holy Pictures With Portraits Of Xi Jinping. Church Militant. November 26, 2019. https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/chinese-catholics-forced-to-replace-holy-pictures-with-portraits-of-xi-jinping

9 《习思想大入侵：寺庙被迫装大屏日日播　教堂书室无圣经放满习著作》[Encroachment of “Xi Jinping Thought:” Temples Required to Install Large-Screen TVs with Daily Broadcasts and Church Libraries Filled with Xi’s Writings, No Bibles]，中国禁闻网[www.bannedbook.org]. October 19, 2019. https://www.bannedbook.org/bnews/headline/20191019/1209389.html

10 ai Shengyi. Confidential Documents Escalate Repression of The Church of Almighty God. Bitter Winter. June 16, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/new-round-of-crackdown-against-the-church-of-almighty-god/

11 30-year-old Christian Arrested Twice and Sentenced to 15 and a Half Years in Xinjiang. ADHRRF. December 26, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/30-year-old-christian-arrested-twice-and-sentenced-to-15-and-a-half-years-in-xinjiang.html

12 HRWF Prisoners Database - China. HRWF. Updated on December 17, 2019. https://hrwf.eu/hrwf-prisoners-database-china/

13 4169 Cases of Arbitrary Arrest and Detention of CAG Christians by CCP. ADHRRF. Updated on December 09, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/the-christians-from-the-church-of-almighty-god-arrested-or-persecuted.html

14 Ye Jiajia. Religious Suppressions Intensify in Shandong. Bitter Winter. May 28, 2019.

https://bitterwinter.org/religious-suppressions-intensify-in-shandong/

15 《政府招募社区人员、清洁工做探子》[Landlords, Garbagemen Enlisted to Spy for Government]. 中国禁闻网[www.bannedbook.org]. January 19, 2019. https://www.bannedbook.org/bnews/headline/20190119/1066677.html

16 Zhang Feng. Be Vigilant, Your Landlord or Doctor Could Be Spying on You. Bitter Winter. July 20, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/your-landlord-could-be-spying-on-you/

17 《刚刚！盐湖公安发布重要通告！请大家相互转告！》[Just Now! Important Notice from Yanhu Public Security Sub-Bureau!]. Tencent. January 24, 2019. https://new.qq.com/omn/20190124/20190124B1A93D.html

18 See information on Wang Ping in Table 3 and that on Ding Renxin in Case 16 in Annex.

19 ropaganda Against The Church of Almighty God Surges in Henan. TASRHR. August 21, 2019. https://www.tasrhr.org/news-and-videos/news/propaganda-against-the-church-of-almighty-god-surges-in-henan

20 Li Mingxuan. 260 Church of Almighty God Members Arrested in Shandong. Bitter Winter. September 1, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/260-church-of-almighty-god-members-arrested-in-shandong/

21 Zhao Mingzhe. Suppression of Believers Intensifies Ahead of National Day. Bitter Winter. September 1, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/suppression-of-believers-intensifies-ahead-of-national-day/

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Over 1,000 Church of Almighty God Members Arrested in Shandong. ADHRRF. November 23, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/134255.html

25 《石溪镇2019年反邪教工作要点》[Main Points of Anti-cult Work in Shixi Town in 2019]. 重庆市南川区人民政府门户网[Portal of People’s Government of Nanchuan District in Chongqing Municipality]. April 28, 2019. http://zwgk.cqnc.gov.cn/html/content/19/04/008682034-2019-02352.shtml

26 Shanxi Christian Subjected to Forced Indoctrination, Burning, Scalding and Sexual Abuse by Police. ADHRRF. January 15, 2020. https://en.adhrrf.org/shanxi-christian-subjected-to-forced-indoctrination-burning-scalding-and-sexual-abuse-by-police.html

27 The Curious Case of Christian Wu Haiyan Jumping to Her Death While Detained. The Church of Almighty God. https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/news/persecuted-to-death/#mulu-24

28 Xiang Yi. Little-Known Prisoners of Xinjiang Camps: Members of The Church of Almighty God. Bitter Winter. July 29, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/church-of-almighty-god-membes-in-xinjiang-camps/

29 Li Benbo. Guilt by Association: Re-Educating Church of Almighty God Believers’ Families in Xinjiang. Stella Del Mattino. August 13, 2019. https://en.msa-it.org/freedom-news20190813/

30 Chang Xin. Church of Almighty God Members “Transformed” in Xinjiang. Bitter Winter. August 6, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/church-of-almighty-god-members-transformed-in-xinjiang/

31 Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List. USCIRF. https://www.uscirf.gov/victims-list/prisoner/12881;

Tang Zhe. Church of Almighty God Members Given Hefty Prison Sentences. Bitter Winter. September 02, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/church-of-almighty-god-members-given-hefty-prison-sentences/

32 Massimo Introvigne, James T. Richardson, and Rosita Šorytė. Would the Real Article 300 Please Stand Up? Refugees from Religious Movements Persecuted as Xie Jiao in China: The Case of The Church of Almighty God. The Journal of CESNUR, Volume 3, Issue 5, September—October 2019, pages 3—86. https://cesnur.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/tjoc_3_5_1_introvigne.pdf

33 Yao Zhangjin. 30 Believers Sentenced to Long Terms in Prison. Bitter Winter. November 2, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/30-believers-sentenced-to-long-terms-in-prison/

34 Massimo Introvigne. Welcome to Xi Jinping’s “Smart Jails”: A Secret Text Revealed. Epoch Times. July 24, 2019. https://www.theepochtimes.com/welcome-to-xi-jinpings-smart-jails-a-secret-text-revealed_3014660.html

35 Elderly Christian Left With Sequelae After Brutal Corporal Punishment in Prison. ADHRRF. December 21, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/elderly-christian-left-with-sequelae-after-brutal-corporal-punishment-in-prison.html

36 Christian Tan Huizhen Forcibly Brainwashed and Fed With Psychotropic Medication Over 200 Days. ADHRRF. January 21, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-tan-huizhen-forcibly-brainwashed-and-fed-with-psychotropic-medication-over-200-days.html

37 Hu Ke. Believer Returns Disabled After 7 Years of Torment in Prison. Bitter Winter. December 17, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/believer-returns-disabled-after-7-years-of-torment-in-prison/

38 Li Mingxuan. Free, but Not so Much: New Measures to Control Believers. Bitter Winter. May 10, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/free-but-not-so-much-new-measures-to-control-believers/

39 Elderly Believer Forced to Commit Suicide After Constant Surveillance and Harassment for Faith in God. ADHRRF. July 22, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/elderly-believer-forced-to-commit-suicide-after-constant-surveillance-and-harassment-for-faith-in-god.html

40 兰州市中级人民法院[Lanzhou City Intermediate People’s Court].《【法院微提醒】一人犯罪，家人牵连：被判过刑的人不能从事这些职业，子女也受限！》[A Friendly Legal Reminder That Family Members are Implicated in Any Individual’s Crime: Sentenced Criminals Cannot Hold These Positions and Their Children Also Face Restrictions]. 百姓头条[quchew.com]. September 2, 2019. http://www.quchew.com/content/20190902/2872451.htm

41 Bai Shengyi. Confidential Documents Expose CCP’s Plans to Persecute The Church of Almighty God Abroad. Bitter Winter. July 22, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/plans-to-persecute-cag-abroad-exposed/

42 Jia Zhigang. From Actor to Refugee: The Story of Jia Zhigang. Bitter Winter. July 31, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/from-actor-to-refugee-the-story-of-jia-zhigang/

43 Xiao Baiming. CCP Preys on China’s Religious Refugees in Europe. Bitter Winter. September 21, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/ccp-preys-on-chinas-religious-refugees-in-europe/

44 Tom Miles. Saudi Arabia and Russia among 37 states backing China's Xinjiang policy. Reuters. July 12, 2019. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-xinjiang-rights/saudi-arabia-and-russia-among-37-states-backing-chinas-xinjiang-policy-idUKKCN1U721L

45 YouTube video. US Lawmakers Celebrate the Establishment of Coalition to Advance Religious Freedom in China. Eastern Light. April 7, 2019. https://youtu.be/q0HYwT2n89Y

46 YouTube video. 14-Year On-the-run Testimony on CCP’s High-tech Suppression of Chinese Christians. Eastern Light. August 2, 2019. https://youtu.be/8_RuLXRNZhY

47 30 MPs of Lithuanian Parliament to Xi Jinping: Stop Persecuting Uyghurs, Tibetans, Catholics, Falun Gong. Central Tibetan Administration. December 17, 2019. https://tibet.net/members-of-lithuanian-parliament-to-xi-jinping-stop-persecuting-uyghurs-tibetans-the-church-of-almighty-god-falun-gong/

48 Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List. USCIRF. https://www.uscirf.gov/victims-list/

49 Massimo Introvigne. Inside The Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/inside-the-church-of-almighty-god-9780190089092?cc=us&lang=en&

50 Chang Xin. Church of Almighty God Believer Dies in Police Custody. Bitter Winter. September 18, 2019. https://bitterwinter.org/church-of-almighty-god-believer-dies-in-police-custody/

51 Seriously Ill Christian Yu Xiangju Detained, Dies After CCP Deprives Her of Medication and Delays Treatment. ADHRRF. October 31, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/seriously-ill-christian-yu-xiangju-detained-dies-after-ccp-deprives-her-of-medication-and-delays-treatment.html

52 CCP Persecution Worsens Medical Condition of 21-year-old Christian Liu Jun, Who Dies From Delayed Treatment. ADHRRF. December 28, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/ccp-persecution-worsens-medical-condition-of-21-year-old-christian-liu-jun-who-dies-from-delayed-treatment.html

53 Christian from Liaoning Died of Relapsed Cancer Caused by CCP’s Mistreatment in Detention. ADHRRF. September 10, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-from-liaoning-died-of-relapsed-cancer-caused-by-ccps-mistreatment-in-detention.html

54 Christian Died of Lung Cancer Caused by CCP’s Mistreatment in Detention in Zhejiang. ADHRRF. January 5, 2020. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-died-of-lung-cancer-caused-by-ccps-mistreatment-in-detention-in-zhejiang.html

55 CAG Christian Liu Hua, Paralyzed as a Result of Cruel Torture by CCP, Dies After Enduring a Prolonged Period of Harassment. ADHRRF. December 3, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/cag-christian-liu-hua-paralyzed-as-a-result-of-cruel-torture-by-ccp-dies-after-enduring-a-prolonged-period-of-harassment.html

56 Christian Cheng Xiangyu Falls Seriously Ill and Dies From Delayed Treatment While Detained for Her Faith. ADHRRF. April 19, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-cheng-xiangyu-falls-seriously-ill-and-dies-from-delayed-treatment-while-detained-for-her-faith.html

57 Surrounded by CCP Police, CAG Christian Li Sulian Plunges to Her Death in Effort to Escape. ADHRRF. December 16, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/surrounded-by-ccp-police-cag-christian-li-sulian-plunges-to-her-death-in-effort-to-escape.html

58 Christian Cheng Dongzhu Driven to Suicide by Drowning, Unable to Withstand the CCP’s Long-term Surveillance and Pressure. ADHRRF. September 20, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-cheng-dongzhu-driven-to-suicide-by-drowning-unable-to-withstand-the-ccps-long-term-surveillance-and-pressure.html

59 The same as footnote 36.

60 The same as footnote 35.

61 The same as footnote 37.

62 Christian Subjected to Mistreatment and Indoctrination in Prison Term, Suffering Physical and Emotional Harm. ADHRRF. December 20, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-subjected-to-mistreatment-and-indoctrination-in-prison-term-suffering-physical-and-emotional-harm.html

63 Christian Couple Arrested and Beaten for Belief in God With Husband’s Two Ribs Broken. ADHRRF. January 7, 2020. https://en.adhrrf.org/christian-couple-arrested-and-beaten-for-belief-in-god-with-husbands-two-ribs-broken.html

64 《#通缉令#　【举报她，最高得1万元奖励】…》[Wanted: Report Her for a Reward of up to RMB 10,000]. 最热播[zuirebo.com]. December 17, 2019.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-yu0SM6obFEgUaW886fs6MYIPbw28ipT/view

65 Kong Lingru. 《看到这位泗水妇女请报警！有重大作案嫌疑》[Please Report Any Sightings of This Sishui Woman to the Police; She Is Suspected of a Serious Crime]. 看点快报[kuaibao.qq.com]. September 5, 2019. https://kuaibao.qq.com/s/20190905A0AQWR00?refer=spider;

Zhang Wenshu. Church of Almighty God Devotees Hunted for Practicing Faith. Bitter Winter. January 10, 2020. https://bitterwinter.org/church-of-almighty-god-devotees-hunted-for-practicing-faith/

66 CCP Sets Bounty for CAG Christian Cui Huihui for Spreading the Gospel. ADHRRF. December 19, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/ccp-sets-bounty-for-cag-christian-cui-huihui-for-spreading-the-gospel.html

67 CCP Sets Bounty for Christian Couple Sun Lianhu and Zhang Yuchun for Their Belief in Almighty God. ADHRRF. December 20, 2019. https://en.adhrrf.org/ccp-sets-bounty-for-christian-couple-sun-lianhu-and-zhang-yuchun-for-their-belief-in-almighty-god.html;

齐鲁今日聊城[Qilu Jinri Liaocheng].《悬赏20万！在聊城见到这40个人！请立即报警！》[RMB 200,000 Reward! Immediately Notify Police in Case of Sightings of Any of These 40 Individuals in Liaocheng!]. 汉丰网(www.kaixian.tv). August 27, 2019. http://www.kaixian.tv/gd/2019/0827/815887_4.html