A new report demonstrates what anecdotal stories have been telling us for years. The Chinese Communist Party is actively cracking down on Christians, detaining them and attempting to force them to denounce their faith in exchange for freedom.
This is happening in secret facilities away from everyone, including state-run media. This is an important distinction from other, more public displays of anti-Christian behavior because it signifies an escalation beyond the public control the party has and towards the secret persecution they do not want the world to see. According to The Daily Wire:
The Chinese Communist Party is reportedly detaining Christians in secret facilities and forcing them to renounce their faith or face being tortured for months.
“A member of a Christian ‘house church’ in the southwestern province of Sichuan who asked to be identified by a pseudonym Li Yuese said he was held in a facility run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s United Front Work Department, working in tandem with the state security police, for 10 months after a raid on his church in 2018,” Radio Free Asia reported. “Another Christian who asked to remain anonymous told RFA that similar facilities are being used across China, not just for Protestants, but also for members of the underground Catholic church, and of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, a target of authorities since 1999.”
Radio Free Asia is a non-profit broadcasting corporation funded through the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent federal government agency.
The communists reportedly focus mostly on targeting “house churches” that are not not members of the CCP-backed Three-Self Patriotic Association, which teaches people a CCP-approved version of Christianity because it views Christianity as a national security threat.
“It was a mobile facility, that could just set up in some basement somewhere. It was staffed by people from several different government departments,” Li said. “It had its own (CCP) political and legal affairs committee working group, and they mainly target Christians who are members of house churches.”
Evidence of torture has been hard to come by in Communist China as their tight grip on national and international media makes it challenging to report on what’s going on. But the rising underground digital space in China is making it easier—albeit more risky—to get evidence out to the world.
Christians face persecution greater than any other religious group around the world. Even in the United States which protects religious liberties through the First Amendment, challenges have arisen in recent years that seek to diminish the influence of the church in this nation. In China, the influence of Christianity has been on a steady rise for decades, but not without cost. They must continue to operate in the shadows, which is why house churches are being targeted by the Chinese Communist Party.
Considering the atrocities being reported today have been trying to find the light for nearly three years, it should send a shiver up Christians’ backs to think of how much worse it has gotten since then.
