‘When I obey the Lord, I still have joy and hope. If I compromise to get out of here, then the suffering I experience would only result in despair.’
Preacher Li Jie and his wife Li Shanshan were among the many earliest members of Covenant Home (“Shengyue Jiayuan”) Church which was founded in early 2018, the identical 12 months that Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs got here into force and the Chinese government began a sweeping crackdown on unregistered ‘house’ churches like Covenant Home which continues to this point.
It can be a couple of years before the Lis would experience this crackdown first-hand; in January 2021 – on one among the coldest days of winter – the couple and their two young songs were evicted from their home after local police pressured their landlady to accomplish that. The reason? Li Jie had added his name to a statement signed by over 400 Chinese pastors and church leaders calling on the federal government to respect the essential freedoms and human rights of spiritual residents.
Despite such cruel treatment, Covenant Home Church defied the pressure and insisted on operating as a faith community. Based in Linfen in northern China’s Shanxi Province – a region of wealthy Christian history – the church continued to organise family-friendly events throughout the school summer holidays to cater to the massive number of kids in its congregation.
It was during one such event nevertheless that every little thing modified for Covenant Home Church, and once more especially for the Lis.
A vacation interrupted
On 19 August 2022 – the second day of the church’s summer retreat at a national park a two-hour drive from Linfen – police stormed a gathering of roughly 70 church members, including around 40 children, who were having fun with some family games.
Li Jie was placed in handcuffs and pinned to the bottom, as was one other preacher Han Xiaodong, as questions of ‘who’re you?’ and ‘what are you doing?’ were ignored by officers who proceeded to confiscate the phones and laptops of all those gathered, demanding passwords from their owners and ordering everyone to maintain their hands on tables.
The entire group was placed into buses and police cars to take them back to Linfen, where they were held and interrogated in separate venues overnight.
Church members later reported that they were asked questions that were specifically designed to incriminate Li, with the police pressuring them to say that Li was the most important organiser of the church and that they’d donated money to him.
While most were released the subsequent day, Li Jie, Li Shanshan and Han Xiaodong were held and interrogated for 4 days before all three were placed in a type of secret detention often called Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location (RSDL) on 23 August. A letter from Li Shanshan to Li Jie, written on 9 March 2023, the tenth anniversary of their marriage, later described how the trio were forced to sit down in a corridor and subjected to sleep deprivation for 3 days.
A family torn apart
The Lis and Han were all held until 6 September 2022, upon which Li Shanshan was released on bail and eventually returned home to take care of their two sons.
That was the last time she saw her husband.
Li Jie and Han were transferred to the Yaodu District Detention Centre, and each were formally arrested in September. Both preachers refused to admit to the completely unfounded allegations of ‘fraud’ that the authorities had made against them, prompting the police to resort to the relentless harassment of members of Covenant Home Church to pressure them to incriminate their leaders.
Church members were phoned, visited and summoned for questioning for months, and in some case the police even approached their employers and relatives in an effort to pressure them to ‘co-operate’.
In one particularly shocking incident, one other church member Wang Qiang was violently arrested on 1 November 2022 and subsequently tortured because he refused to provide false evidence against Li and Han. He has since joined the 2 of them within the Yaodu District Detention Centre, separated from his wife, young daughter and a son he has yet to satisfy for nearly a 12 months and a half now.
A concerning trend
Li, Han and Wang were all formally charged with ‘fraud’ in June 2023, with public prosecutors in Linfen accusing them of forming a criminal ‘clique’ and obtaining ‘illegal income’ amounting to 780,000 yuan (roughly £85,000 GBP). All three are still awaiting trial.
This has change into far too common in China lately. Many church leaders who signed the identical declaration as Li Jie back in 2018 have been similarly convicted on charges of ‘fraud’ or ‘illegal business operations’.
The intention of such efforts is just not only to justify the detention or imprisonment of spiritual leaders, but additionally to undermine their fame and credibility. But Li Jie and lots of like him haven’t lost hope; as is evident from the quote at the highest of this text – shared via his lawyer with whom he has at the least been in a position to meet now – Li stays committed to the reality that he’s innocent of the fees levelled against him.
The international community in turn must honour this commitment by refusing to simply accept China’s lies about Li and the countless others like him, and indeed by holding the Chinese Communist Party to account for its gross mistreatment of house churches and other religion or belief communities that don’t conform to its policy of complete and total control over all features of society.
