A member of an underground house church in China will recount her experience of torture, abuse and arbitrary imprisonment by Chinese police on Thursday, Feb. 10, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.

Liu Xianzhi, a member of the South China Church, was arrested in 2001 and tortured by police into falsely testifying that the pastor of the South China Church, Gong Shengliang, raped her.

"I was taken to Zhongxiang Police Training Center," 34-year-old Liu said according to the China Aid Association (CAA). "Six of seven male policemen started to question me in their dormitory. One asked me, ‘Do you know why we arrest you?’ I said, ‘Because I believe in Jesus.’ He slapped my face when he heard this. He said, ‘Do you know what age we are in today? And you still believe in Jesus?’ I didn’t answer him back."

Even after escaping from China last month, Liu stated that her experience in prison continues to haunt her. "When I hear dogs barking, loud knocking on the door, the sound of police sirens, or I see men who are not wearing shirts (like my interrogators), I have an overwhelming sense of fear," Liu told the CAA.

According to the Association, Liu is one of 8,903 members of the South China Church who police have arrested for their religious beliefs, including Gong, who is serving a life sentence in prison based on multiple confessions obtained through torture.

On Thursday, the CAA reports that in addition to Liu’s testimony, Senator Sam Brownback and other Congressional leaders will express their grave concern over religious persecution in China. Brownback, who is Chairman of the Helsinki Commission—a federal organisation that monitors and works for improvements in human rights in Europe—also serves on the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Joint Economic Committee.

Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association and a former prisoner of religious conscience, will also release a formal opinion by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in the case of Yinan Zhang, a leading historian of the underground church who was arrested on Sept. 26, 2003. Zhang was sentenced to two years of re-education through labour Oct. 27, 2003 by an administrative tribunal in Henan Province after the government convicted him of attempting to "subvert the national government" by misinterpreting statements culled from his personal prayer journals and Christian essays.




Kenneth Chan
Ecumenical Press