Sworn Declaration of Du Qing Feng, a member of South China Church

China Aid Association
Sworn Declaration of Du Qing Feng
My name is Du Qing Feng.  I have personal knowledge of all of the contents of this declaration.
Iwas born in 1978 and am from Hubei, Zhaoyang.
I have been attending the South China Church since 1998.  After taking the church’s theology training, I became an evangelist.  As an evangelist, I obey the Great Commission of Jesus Christ given in Matthew 28:19-20 to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
I have known Pastor Gong since 1998 and consider myself close to him.
I saw Pastor Gong ten or more times a year for Bible training.  We discussed challenges in evangelism and theological questions.  I usually met him in church with other people.
Pastor Gong never ordered me to assault anyone.  Nor am I aware of him ever ordering anyone else to assault anybody.  Such conduct would completely contradict the gospel of peace that Pastor Gong faithfully teaches.
I have never met the people that I was accused of assaulting: Chen Yu Hua, Liu Shuang Go, Gu Yao Qian.
8.  On 24 September 2001, police arrested me at Wu Shan Farm in Jingmen.
9.  At the time of my arrest, I was looking for my coworker, Gu Tong Ge.  I did not know that he had already been arrested.
On the evening of 24 September 2001, I was walking along the road to another church member’s home when two strangers dragged me off my bicycle and handcuffed me.
11.     The two strangers did not show me any police identification and did not produce a warrant.  They did not identify themselves as police.
12.    I asked the two strangers “Why are you arresting me? One of them said ‘You stole a bicycle.'”
13.     The two strangers took me to a special interrogation room in Jingmen Police School.
14.    The two strangers made me bend over with my head up against the wall and with my hands cuffed behind my back.  I kept asking them why are you doing this and they would not say.  They went outside and I was kept in that position against the wall for more than half an hour.
15.    When the two men came back, they asked me, “Are you part of the South China Church and are you part of ‘pulling out the nails’?”
16.    Then the two men put heavy chains on my ankles which weighed 15-20 kg each.  They forced me to kneel on the floor and tied my hands behind my back by stretching one arm over my shoulder and one arm up from behind. Then they put an oxygen tank between my hands and back to strain my arms and shoulders.

17.    The police told me “We beat one of your church members to death already, Yu Zhong Ju, in Hubei, Zhong Xiang.  We can torture you members of the South China Church however we want.”
18.    Then they continued to torture me.  When I was kneeling with my hands behind my back, they stood on my calves.  They kept me kneeling for three hours.
19.    During the torture they told me they wanted me to accuse Pastor Gong of ordering assaults and running a cult.

20.    After hours of torture, I could not endure the pain anymore.  Finally I signed a confession that the policemen wrote.  I only saw the introduction to the confession.  I didn’t see the rest of it.  I did not want to sign it.  The police forced me to sign it.
21.    Between my arrest on 24 September 2001 and the first trial on 19 December 2001, I was not allowed to see my family.
22.    I saw my lawyer for the first time on 7 December 2001.  My family members hired a lawyer for me. I don’t know how they found a lawyer for me.

23.    Before the trial, the procuratorate came to talk to me.  They asked whether the police used force to make me sign the statement.  I told them the truth, that I was tortured into signing the statement, but they didn’t say anything.
24.    My lawyer told me I had to confess to what the indictment said I did and that I had to say Pastor Gong ordered me to commit the assaults and to admit that the South China Church is a cult.  He told me that if I wouldn’t admit it they would put me in jail for a long time and in Shayang they had already done this to other South China Church members.
25.    I told the lawyer that the indictment was false, but the lawyer kept trying to persuade me to say that the indictment was true.
26.    During the investigation and before the indictment, I saw other South China Church members who were also named in the indictment at the detention center.
27.    When the procuratorate gave us the indictment on 12 December 2001, they told us that the trial would begin on 19 December 2001.

28.    I told the court that I was innocent, and I thought that telling the judge the truth would enable the judge to give me justice but the court just followed what the indictment said.  The court refused to give me an opportunity to explain that I had been tortured into signing a confession.
29.    On the third day of the trial, they had some photographs of people that I had supposedly assaulted.  They asked me if I recognized them.  I told them that I didn’t recognize anyone in the photographs.  The photographs were of people and houses.  I only got to glance at them as they passed them by in front of me and I flipped through them.
30.    Pastor Gong and Gong Bangkun were there and they also said that they didn’t recognize anything in the pictures. They also just waved the pictures in front of Pastor Gong and Gong Bangkun.

31.    There were some alleged victims in the court, but we did not recognize those people.  We think that they may have been paid by the procuratorate.
32.    The alleged victims did not identify any of us as people who had harmed them, because they did not know who we were.  The alleged victims did not give their names to the court.
33.    The court did not allow Pastor Gong’s lawyers to ask the alleged victims any questions.
34.    Other than asking for compensation, the alleged victims just yelled at us and said that we were members of a cult and “bad eggs.”
35.    I was asked to sign the record of the first trial (which I did), but I was not allowed to read it.
36.    I saw as Qiu Chun Yi, one of the other defendants, tried to see the record and four people punched him.  They were the (peishentuan) jury and the (jiluyuan) court reporter.
37.    On 21 December 2001 the trial ended.
38.    We received the verdict on 29 December 2001.  The judge’s verdict was that I was guilty of intentional assault and destruction of property and he sentenced me to six years in jail, three years for each charge.
***

39.    I did not have a lawyer at the second trial because I was not allowed to talk to my family members.
40.    I attended the second trial for two hours on the morning of the first day.
41.    The procuratorate said that the South China Church was a cult.  Then the procuratorate said that it was a gang.  Pastor Gong’s lawyer said it is not a cult and not a gang.  He told the court that a gang has to have the goal of disrupting social order and that the South China Church does not.
42.    In his opening statement, Pastor Gong’s lawyer told the judge that he and the other lawyers for the South China Church members had not participated in the first trial.  He then asked for evidence from the first trial.  However, the judge would not give him the evidence.

43.    The procuratorate did not read the indictment at the second trial.
44.    When they began to talk about the cases of other South China Church defendants, the guards took me away.  During the second trial, the judge said that the South China Church was a cult.

45.    We never received a second indictment.  Pastor Gong’s lawyer told the judge that the procuratorate should issue a new indictment.
46.    On the second day, Gong Bangkun and Pastor Gong and I were there together at the court and the judge just read out the charges in the original indictment.
47.    The court did not use the record from the first trial.  However, they used my coerced confession that the police obtained by torturing me in September 2001.
48.    I told the court that Pastor Gong and Gong Bangkun did not order me to do anything and Gong Bangkun said the same.

49.    The procuratorate told Gong Bangkun “If you continue to deny what Pastor Gong did, you are going to be punished.”  The procuratorate said “Gong Bangkun if you continue to deny what Pastor Gong did, you will have no chance of parole.”
50.    The alleged victims were at the second trial too.  There were six to seven at the first trial and at the second trial there were more than ten.  They were only alleged victims of intentional injury, not alleged rape victims.  To my knowledge, none of the church members knew any of the alleged victims.
51.    The women from our church who were defendants in the trial told the court that Pastor Gong did not rape them and that the South China Church is not a cult.  The men said the South China Church is not a cult and that Pastor Gong did not order us to assault people.
52.    Pastor Gong said “Please be merciful to my students and don’t give them a severe sentence.”

53.    In the second trial, they again showed me photographs that I did not recognized.  I said “In the first trial, I said I didn’t recognize them.”
54.    They sent us to prison right away after the second trial and I never saw the record of the trial.

55.    I was sentenced to three years for intentional assault and the sentence for destruction of property was overruled.

56.    I was held in Hubei Jiang Bei Reeducation through Labor Camp.
57.    I was released on September 24, 2004. 
58.    In Jiang Bei Reeducation through Labor Camp, I saw Qiu Chunyi and Fu Shi Jun regularly.

59.    When we were in prison, the prison guards limited our talking, confiscated our Bibles and gave us only two meals a day.  The books of other prisoners were not confiscated.
60.    We just want to go back to the way the church was before and we want to glorify God.
I swear under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed this  ___27___ day of ___June_____2005.
                                                                                  ______________________________
                                          Du Qing Feng