Liu Zongxian (alias), male, 55, and his wife, Wei Shuyun (alias), 54, lived in Xinmi City of Henan Province. Both of them are the Christians of The Church of Almighty God. In May of 2019, the couple was arrested by the CCP police and subjected to cruel torture and punishment because of their belief in Almighty God. Liu’s two ribs got broken outright and he is still unable to work to this day.
At a little after 9 p.m. on May 30, 2019, seven policemen charged into Liu Zongxian’s house and, without showing any identification, forcefully arrested Liu and his wife and brought them to the local police station for separate interrogations.
In the interrogation room, the police tried to force Liu Zongxian to divulge information about the church and when he refused, they smacked him repeatedly across the face with a bundled up newspaper, causing his face to swell up. During the course of the interrogation, which lasted until around 2 a.m., Liu Zongxian made three requests to use the bathroom and was denied all three times. In the end, he had no choice but to urinate in his pants.
The police then proceeded to take Liu to another interrogation room, where they continued to grill him about the church. Seeing that he still wasn’t willing to divulge any information, their frustration turned to anger and one police officer viciously kicked Liu twice in the lower back, resulting in his two ribs broken immediately (fractures in the 10th and 11th ribs of his left side upon diagnosis), sending him sprawling to the floor and causing him to be unable to straighten his back. The policeman grabbed Liu and lifted him into a standing position, but Liu’s back hurt so much that he couldn’t stay on his feet and immediately crumpled to the ground. The police officer angrily accused him of faking and even splashed cold water on him, but Liu remained on the floor, unable to move.
The policeman then used a 1.5-meter iron bar to club Liu’s toes and forced him to take off his clothes and kneel on an iron bar. Only when it was clear that he was utterly unable to continue did the torture finally stop. The policeman then proceeded to handcuff Liu to a tiger bench and forbade him from closing his eyes. The officer interrogated Liu in five-minute intervals, but still failed to extract any information from the prisoner. After this, the officer then took Liu to a guardroom, adjusted the thermostat to a freezing cold temperature and forced Liu to stay in the room for half an hour. In response to the frigid cold, Liu curled himself up in a ball; his back hurt so much that he couldn’t even switch which side he lay on. At around 4 a.m., the police subjected Liu to another round of torture and interrogation and smacked him on the face with a rolled up newspaper, causing his face to swell even more. The police concluded the interrogation, having failed to obtain any information from Liu.
Wei Shuyun was also tortured for confession after being arrested. The police officers stomped on her toes and insteps to ground them into the floor with their heels, and slapped her in the face with a ruler and a rolled newspaper, causing her lips to bleed and her face swollen. And they twisted her elbows, handcuffing her hands behind her back, one from above and one from below, and put an iron bar between the handcuffs and her back, lifting it repeatedly, which left her in severe pain. Meanwhile the police kept yelling at her, “You are counter-revolutionaries. Belief in God is banned in China!”
On the morning of June 1, Liu Zongxian and his wife were released from prison, and the police installed locators on their phones to keep track of them.
After the release, Liu Zongxian was still in a lot of pain from his lower back injury. Having been through a period of treatment and recuperation, Liu has still not made a completely recovery and is unable to perform hard physical labor as of now.
