A pastor arrested eight months ago along with 160 congregants as part of an ongoing Chinese crackdown on religion remains missing and advocates say may be facing torture.
One of the church elders, Li Yingqiang, arrested during the targeting of Early Rain Covenant Church in December, was released on bail earlier this week by Chinese authorities. The prominent congregation member remains subject to prosecution.
But Wang Yi, the pastor of the Protestant congregation in Sichuan province, hasn’t been seen.
“Based on past imprisonments of previous people, he is almost definitely being tortured. We haven’t seen any reports that necessarily confirm that, but just based on previous reports we have received of other people, that’s very common,” Brynne Lawrence, an associate at religious freedom nonprofit China Aid, told the Washington Examiner.
Wang has been charged with inciting “subversion of state power.”
Early Rain Covenant Church faced harassment from authorities for several years prior to last December’s crackdown. Lawrence said Chinese president Xi Jinping has promoted “religion with Chinese characteristics” since taking power, leading to an uptick in persecution.
In practice, “religion with Chinese characteristics” means regulating religious communities to ensure they do not undermine the Communist Party and subjecting them to harassment when necessary.
China Aid’s founder, Bob Fu, and the Hudson Institute’s religious freedom expert, Nina Shea, called Xi’s approach to religion a “‘sinicization’ campaign, ostensibly to strengthen Chinese culture,” but in reality it is, “aimed at removing the Bible and its teachings from Chinese Christianity.”
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom rates China as a “country of particular concern,” meaning it engages in “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” Chinese authorities have targeted Christians, Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. Last year, more than 5,000 Christians were arrested on account of their faith.
China is reportedly removing religious references from children’s books. The Ministry of Education is censoring words such as “Bible,” “God,” and Christ.” University professors have also banned books with religious references, including Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“Although USCIRF is glad that Li Yingqiang was released, he should never have been detained in the first place. Unfortunately, we see no sign that the Chinese government is slowing down its persecution of Christians,” Gary Bauer, the Commission’s China monitor, told the Washington Examiner.
“Since the government raided the Early Rain Covenant Church last December, it has closed down several other house churches, [and] attempted to remove any mention of ‘God’ or the ‘Bible’ in works of literature,” said Bauer.
