POLICE in Yunnan province of southwest China arrested a preacher of a Protestant house church for allegedly distributing Covid-19 masks inscribed with Bible verses.
Preacher Chang Hao of a rural church in Zhenxiong county of Zhaotong City was arrested in the second week of April following a police raid, Bitter Winter reported on April 28 referring to his wife, Enlin.
Hao runs a small house church that is not registered with the state-sanctioned Three-Self Church that oversees the affairs of Protestant churches in the country.
Enlin told Bitter Winter that during the April 14 raid police seized Bibles, Christian books, and the anti-COVID masks inscribed with verses.
The masks with Bible verses that he distributed became popular in the area, but the local officials of the Chinese Communist Party found his activism “disturbing,” she alleged.
She said the police refused to allow the family and his lawyer to meet Hao since his detention.
On the third day after the arrest police called them to inform that he would be detained for three days first, and then they would re-examine the situation later.
“Then on April 20, we and our lawyer wanted to go to the Zhenxiong Detention Center to meet my husband, Brother Chang Hao, but they said the meeting was not possible, so we went to the Zhenxiong Public Security Bureau to petition and ask what happened to Chang Hao. They told us that he was in administrative detention for eight days,” she said.
Enlin said that police informed them Hao was now in “criminal detention” but did not elaborate what are charges against him.
“I don’t know where my husband is now, whether he is safe and healthy or not, and we don’t know what to do now, so we can only ask for your help to pray,” she pleaded.
Bitter Winter, which reports on religious liberty and human rights, pointed out that the Chinese Communist regime does not even tolerate religious activities by small, fringe churches like Hao’s because those refuse to register with the government and adhere to the socialist policies of the party.
Hundreds of house churches have been raided and shut down while dozens of Christians including pastors, preachers and laypeople have been arrested, put on trial, and convicted for not registering with the government in the past decades.
The crackdown on religious groups intensified since President Xi Jinping took charge in 2013 and particularly after China adopted repressive Regulations on Religious Affairs in 2018. UCA News
