Jia Ling, female, born on June 18, 1982, an ordinary Christian from The Church of Almighty God (CAG), is from Nanyang City in Henan Province. In 2011, she went to live in the US with her husband. The two of them had to go back to China in 2014 because her husband’s visa had expired, and they took up temporary residence in their hometown in Henan.
In September of 2014, six plainclothes officers with the Nanyang National Security Bureau charged into Jia Ling’s home and took her, still a nursing mother, away for confidential questioning under the pretext that everyone coming back into the country must undergo investigation.
The leader of the provincial national security bureau tried both the carrot and the stick to obtain information on the Church and kept her for questioning for as long as nine days. During the interrogation, the officer said, “We don’t care about what you do inside the country. We just want to know how you, your mother, and your younger brother practiced your beliefs while abroad, how you got in touch with The Church of Almighty God, and how you proselytize. Even if you keep silent, we’ll still be able to get their information. It’s very easy to take them back to China! If you’re not honest with us, you’ll get a heavy sentence after we get them arrested!” Seeing that she refused to speak, the officer once again enticed and threatened her that he wouldn’t let her go home and take care of her infant before his questions were clearly answered. Jia Ling asked the officer, “What law does our faith break so that you really have to arrest us? I’m still nursing; you can’t arrest and detain me. As a law enforcement agency, how can you break the law?” Shamed and provoked, the officer yelled at her, “You really dare tell me about the law? Let me tell you, here I represent the country and the law. I am the law!”
After that several other officers repeatedly asked Jia Ling the same questions and had her husband go advise her to give up information on the Church, but she would not comply. The chief of the security bureau later menacingly intimidated Jia Ling, “If you don’t start to cooperate you’ll get a harsh sentence. I’m telling you, we can make you lose your job with one phone call and even your relatives will be dragged into this. We have ways of dealing with you!” They finally let her go after all of their questioning came to nothing. As she was about to go, an officer warned her, “You have to report to us if you go anywhere else to work, visit relatives, or travel. Even if you leave the city, make a report.” Jia Ling remained under constant residential surveillance after returning home.
In June 2015, Jia Ling and her family were going through customs at the Beijing airport after handling all the formalities to go to the US, but her passport was flagged as lost in the computer system. The employee told her that she was not allowed to leave the country.
So far, Jia Ling is unable to leave China.
