Wang Ju (alias), female, born in 1978, of Chongqing City, is a Christian of The Church of Almighty God.
At around 9 a.m. on May 6, 2019, Wang Ju was stopped and arrested by two police officers from Chongqing City Jiulongpo District National Security Brigade while in route to a gathering and taken to a dark corner of a staircase in a nearby residential building. Wang Ju questioned the officers saying: “You arrested me without displaying any identification, what law have I violated? On what basis are you arresting me?” Without uttering a single word, one of the police officers viciously smacked Wang in the back of the head, causing her to feel dizzy and disoriented. Before she had time to react, the other officer had already handcuffed her hands behind her back and pushed her head up against the wall, so that she was unable to move. Wang Ju sustained excruciatingly painful contusions on her left chin and the right side of her face from the incident. The officer then immediately proceeded to savagely kick Wang on her right calf.
Wang was then taken by the officers to the police station and made to sit strapped to a tiger bench in the interrogation room the entire night.
On the night of the following day, the officers handcuffed Wang, placed a hood over her head and escorted her to a local rural tourism site (a indoctrination base) to conduct a secret interrogation.
From the 8th to the 16th, eight police officers took turns interrogating Wang Ju all day and night. They forbade her from sleeping, and whenever she closed her eyes one of the officers would yell right into her face. During that time, in order to get Wang Ju to divulge information about the church and abandon her faith, the police subjected her to forced indoctrination, including lectures on atheism and misinterpretations of Biblical scripture. They also showed pictures of 14 different Christians to Wang, but she said she didn’t recognize any of them.
When Wang Ju refused to speak, the police repeatedly whipped her on the mouth and hands with a whip made of three power charger cables braided together, causing Wang Ju excruciating pain. The police also handcuffed Wang to a tiger bench and tried to force her to give a recorded statement of divulging the names of other Christians. When Wang Ju failed to comply, they brutally lashed her fingertips with the whip continuously for five minutes, leaving Wang’s fingers red and swollen. When Wang still refused to divulge any information, the police continued to lash her fingertips and only stopped when they became bruised, swollen and numb (Wang Ju’s fingers remained swollen for a long time after that). The police then forced Wang to stand in a half squat, but because Wang hadn’t had any food or water for several days, had been forbidden to sleep, and had been ravaged and tortured to the point where she was completely devoid of strength, she was unable to maintain a half squat and very fell to the ground. The police, however, forced her to get right back up and continue standing in a half squat. This torturous routine was repeated several times before they finally relented.
At the indoctrination base, Wang was indoctrinated, abused and ravaged for a total of 51 days, during which time her weight dropped by an astounding 7.5 kilograms.
On June 27, Wang Ju was charged with “using a xie jiao to undermine the enforcement of the law”, detained by the police of Jiulongpo District Public Security Bureau and sent to the Jiulongpo District Detention Center.
During her incarceration, Wang Ju’s family spent 20,000 RMB (about 2,820 USD) in the process of trying to free her and also paid 3,000 RMB (about 423 USD) for bail, before finally succeeding in obtaining Wang’s temporary release on August 2, of the same year. However, the police seized Wang Ju’s passport and warned her that she was not to leave the country any time within the next year and must regularly report to the police station to confirm her whereabouts. To this day, Wang Ju is still being closely monitored by the police.
