“Jinzhai County is called ‘the Cradle of Generals’ by Chinese communists, since 59 men from that area have gone on to reach the rank of ‘General’ in the People’s Liberation Army,” says Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley. “But Christians remember the area because of the great evangelist Zhang Yongsheng. Before becoming a Christian, he had been a resistance leader. He was imprisoned under the Communists, and his family struggled for decades as a result. He didn’t know God but cried out to him during the famine of the late 1950s and early 1960s, promising to serve God if his family was spared from starvation. Then in 1981 he received a dream where a book fell from heaven into his hands. He later met an old woman with a Bible, and he realized this was the book from his dream. He became a Christian and went on to establish more than 400 independent underground churches in the Dabie Mountains in the next decade.” 

Those churches, according to Representative Foley, have faced severe crackdowns since the beginning. 

“In August 1993, local authorities raided a meeting site in the area, and one Christian was killed while protecting other believers. Another Christian was stabbed and blinded in one eye,” said Representative Foley. She says authorities in the area have also expelled some students from school or publicly punished them because of their faith. 

Representative Foley says that the latest raids happened on September 16 and 17. She says multiple witnesses shared details of the raids on condition of anonymity. 

“Witnesses say that on the first day, 30 police officers and local officials led by the chief of the Youfangdian Police Station searched the church premises, confiscated believers’ phones, deleted videos of the raid, and took two female pastors to the police station for questioning and further detainment,” says Representative Foley. Witnesses say that an official also threatened that the church’s pastors would be put under daily surveillance. 

“Then on the second day of the raid, witnesses say that officials led by a representative from the religious affairs department in Gubei Town came into the church and found several young believers practicing musical instruments,” says Representative Foley. “The representative said he had received orders from a ‘Central Inspection Team’ that the church was henceforth prohibited from performing or singing songs containing the words ‘Jesus,’ ‘God,’ or ‘Lord,’ and that hymns had to be replaced with songs praising the Communist Party.”  

Representative Foley says that the motive for the raid is not known. Neither the Jinzhai County government nor the Youfangdian Police Station have commented publicly about the incident.