The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wantonly persecutes religious faith and deprived Christians of religious freedom. Moreover, their children are implicated and denied deserved right to education.
Zhou Xin and her younger brother Zhou Rui were forced to drop out of school three years ago. When seeing children with school bags going to school and heading home, they will still cast envious looks at them.
Zhou Xin’s father Zhou Xiangguang is a Christian of The Church of Almighty God (CAG), who was once arrested and detained when spreading the gospel. Afterward, officers with the local police station visited him frequently to harass him, threatening and coaxing him to renounce his faith.
In February 2016, Zhou Xiangguang took Zhou Xin and her younger brother to Rui’an City of Zhejiang Province to work. He used his connections to find his two children a school where they could study temporarily.
Three months later, officers with a town police station in Rui’an City visited the principal. The following day, every student received a notification with some printed contents of blaspheming God, warning them not to believe in God. If they choose to do so, they will not be allowed to go to school and will be arrested. The school demanded for the signatures of students and their parents to that document, or else they would be denied access to school. Zhou Rui’s head teacher talked to her intentionally, insisting that her father must sign the document. Zhou Xiangguang refused and soon he received a call from the school, notifying him to take his two children home because he didn’t provide the school with adequate certificates. The school deliberately made things difficult for him, insisting that he had to show them papers including his marriage certificate, birth permit, household register, house ownership certificate and pay the 26,000 RMB social security fee a year for his two children. Even if he could satisfy their requirements, he still needed to wait for the permit from school before his children could continue their education. Due to the obstacles they purposely put up, 11-year-old Zhou Xin and her 9-year-old brother were forced out of school.
From 2016 to 2019, because of their drop out, they were discriminated against by neighbors and acquaintances and the kids in the neighborhood refused to play with them. This had a traumatic effect on Zhou Xin and Zhou Rui. They wept many times in secret.
Similarly, Xiaoliang, a 13-year-old boy in Fujian Province, was also forced to drop out of school because of his parents’ faith.
Xiaoliang’s parents are both CAG Christians and they had to live in hiding due to the CCP’s cruel repression and persecution against the Church. After they left, police officers came to Xiaoliang’s home multiple times to investigate his parents’ whereabouts and arrest them. In September 2017, the school repeatedly inquired Xiaoliang about his father. Xiaoliang had to drop out of school and live in hiding with his father in other places.
In December 2017, Xiaoliang’s mother was arrested and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment after she had been tracked by the police for over a year.
According to sources, after the arrest of Xiaoliang’s mother, the police went to the school he once studied in to find out the whereabouts of him and his father.
Due to the CCP’s massive arrest, a lot of CAG Christians had to leave their home and go into hiding, with no home to call their own. Their children, who fled with them, are deprived of the right to education consequently.
Haohao’s parents and grandparents are all CAG Christians from Shandong Province. On August 10, 2018, over ten police officers burst into their house. At that time, it so happened that they were outside and thus avoided the arrest. To escape the CCP’s pursuit, 7-year-old Haohao was pulled out of school and started to live on the run with his family, moving from place to place.
Besides, 5-year-old Yueyue was at her age to start kindergarten, but she had no access, because her mother, who was followed by police and escaped from the arrest on her way to a worship meeting, was on the wanted list. Yueyue lives with her grandmother, who teaches her to read and write along with Christians visiting their home.
