Wang Qiang has never met his son. His wife was seven months pregnant when he was violently arrested outside his workplace in Linfen, China on 1 November 2022, and he has not seen his family – including also his four-year-old daughter Mimi – since then.
Mrs Wang has nicknamed their son Dendeng, which means ‘waiting’ for his father’s return.
A whole church affected
The Wang family belong to a small unregistered ‘house’ church known as Covenant Home (‘Shengyue Jiayuan’) Church which was founded in Linfen, a city in China’s northern province of Shanxi, in 2018. Like all unregistered churches in China, Covenant Home’s existence is viewed by the authorities as illegal and its members and leaders have faced pressure since the beginning, but the situation took a significant turn for the worse on 19 August 2022.
It was on this date that police stormed a summer retreat gathering of approximately 70 church members – including around 40 children – confiscating phones and laptops, detaining and searching everyone in attendance, and ultimately placing three of the church’s leaders under Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location (RSDL) – a form of secret detention where detainees are denied access to a lawyer and their family members are not told where they are.
While one of the leaders was released almost three weeks later, the remaining pair – Li Jie and Han Xiaodong – were moved to Yaodu District Detention Centre, where they would later be joined by Wang Qiang.
This marked the beginning of a process of intense harassment of Covenant Home Church as police attempted to construct a completely unfounded fraud case against Li and Han. Church members were repeatedly visited, phoned and summoned in effort to force them to incriminate their leaders, in cases with the police even approaching congregants’ relatives and employers and asking them to help them ‘co-operate’.
A family shattered
It was Wang’s brave refusal to do so that ultimately led to his own detention. On 1 November 2022 he took a then three-year-old Mimi to kindergarten before going to work – having insisted on doing so even though it was his wife’s turn to do the school run – only he didn’t return that evening.
Mrs Wang – then heavily pregnant – was forced to search for her husband, but none of his friends and colleagues had seen him. Eventually, she went to the management of the building where he works, and saw CCTV footage showing him being violently taken by police as he was about to enter the building. The police told the building’s security guard that Wang had stolen a motorbike.
It was assumed that they had confiscated his phone immediately, and declined his request to inform his family, but the police’s cruelty did not stop there.
On 2 November police took Wang to a hotel where he was placed in an interrogation chair (known as a ‘tiger chair’) at the end of a corridor with his hands, feet and chest tied to the chair. He was made to sit in the same position for seven days, with the handcuffs only removed when he needed to use the toilet and occasionally at mealtimes, which consisted of a glass of cold water and a steamed bun.
As the temperature dropped at night he would ask for a blanket, but the police consistently refused to give him one, aggravating the pain he already suffered from a herniated disc in his lower back. After a week of such excruciating pain he was moved from RSDL at the hotel to
the Puxian Detention Centre, and two weeks later to the Yaodu District Detention Centre where he was finally permitted to meet with his lawyer, though he was still prevented from seeing his family and has been ever since.
The public prosecutor told Wang’s wife that he could go home if he provided evidence against Li and Han, who were also held in the Yaodu District Detention Centre, however both Wang and his wife refused to do so.
The torture that Wang suffered remains highly common in China – particularly for human rights defenders and members of religious groups that the authorities consider illegal, such as the Falun Gong movement – and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s increased use of RSDL over the past decade has not only made such violations more likely to occur in the first place, but has also reduced the possibility of them ever being investigated.
The wait continues
Wang was eventually charged with ‘fraud’ alongside Li and Han in June 2023. Public prosecutors accused the three men of forming a criminal ‘clique’ and obtaining ‘illegal income’ – both completely unfounded charges for which all three are still awaiting a trial which is unlikely to ever be fair.
Meanwhile, Wang’s family wait for his return. Dendeng turned one in January 2024 and is still yet to meet his father; Mimi often pretends to be talking to Wang on the phone: ‘Come home soon! I miss you so much!’
Pictures of families torn apart like this on account of their religion or belief are far too common in China, and without concrete and consistent pressure from the international community the CCP will continue to subject the Wang family and countless others like them to such inhumane and unconscionable treatment.
All can play a part in bringing this to an end, raising our voices about stories like this one wherever we are free to do so, and encouraging those in power in our own countries to ensure that cases like those of Wang, Li and Han are raised with the Chinese authorities at every opportunity.
