Data about the increased persecution of the church in the last months of 2024 depict a horrific situation and new forms of torture.
By Jiang Tao
February 24, 2025
“Bitter Winter” has received verified information about the campaign conducted in 2024 in China against members of The Church of Almighty God (CAG). After nearly six months of surveillance, investigations, and groundwork, the CCP launched continuous arrest operations across the country in the latter half of the year.
According to incomplete statistics, in October 2024, 648 CAG devotees were arrested in Jilin Province. On October 11 alone, 210 church members were taken into custody in Changchun City, and within four days, two of them died from torture.
A CAG female grassroots church leader, Wang Yuxia (61), was detained on October 11 and taken to a hotel for secret interrogations. On October 17, the police claimed she died suddenly of a heart attack. Her body showed severe facial bruising, with one eye blackened and swollen, making her almost unrecognizable, her neck was bent to one side, appearing broken, and one of her legs was also broken with the foot unnaturally twisted.
Wang Fuhua, 49, another female grassroots church leader arrested on the same day, also died suddenly. After nine days and eight nights of secret interrogations, the police claimed the cause of her death was a sudden heart attack. However, those who knew her reported that she had always been in good health.
During his interrogations, another CAG member was slapped over fifty times by the police, who then forced him to strip down to his underwear and repeatedly poured cold water over him. He was deprived of sleep for four days and five nights, and was systematically tortured.
The police thrust the barrel of a wooden pistol into his anus, smeared mustard on toothbrushes and inserted them into his mouth, anus, and genitals, and plucked his pubic hair to stuff into his mouth.
A female CAG devotee was subjected to the “Exhausting an Eagle” torture for a week, deprived of water or food for seven consecutive days. The police repeatedly hit her head with bottled water, made her sit on a tiger bench, and used a key to scratch her ribs vigorously. They also placed a plastic bag over her head, removing it only when she was on the brink of suffocation, repeating this torture for eight hours, leading to her losing bladder control and experiencing multiple instances of suffocation. The police also stripped her underwear off and smeared mustard on her anus and genitals. She was tortured to the point where she repeatedly wished for death.
According to an insider from the Changchun City Public Security Bureau, on October 14, he heard sounds of banging on doors, furniture being knocked over, and someone falling in the interrogation room. On October 15, he saw a colleague enter the room with a packet of needles, and shortly after, he heard someone screaming repeatedly, “You’re too cruel, using such torture on me!” The screams persisted for a while. The interrogation lasted through the entire night. Some of the detained CAG members reported that during their secret interrogations at hotels, they frequently heard sounds of beatings, and screams coming from neighboring rooms.
During interrogations, police officers revealed that they had been using high-definition cameras to monitor CAG members’ homes 24/7 for the past six months. This surveillance method was used to track and arrest more CAG members.
According to incomplete statistics, 19,039 CAG members were arrested in China in 2024, marking a sharp increase of 49% from the previous year. At least twenty-five church members died due to persecution over the course of the year.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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