Updated: Yunnan court to further investigate Christians accused of cult crimes

Updated on Feb. 17, 2017, at 4:01 p.m.


(Dali, Yunan—Feb. 14, 2017) Authorities in China’s southern Yunnan province detained a Christian woman, accusing her of cult crimes late last year, according to an update on Feb. 7 from her lawyer.

Tu Yan, a Christian originally from Hunan province, was doing ministry work in Dali, Yunan on Oct. 22, 2016, when officers from the public security bureau arrested her and four other Christians, including her boss and a 24 year-old Christian woman named Su Min. Tu and Su were charged with “using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement.” Though three of those detained were released on bail, Tu and Su’s cases were instead transferred to the procuratorate for further investigation.

Ren Quanniu, Tu’s lawyer, told China Aid’s reporter on Feb. 7 that he had visited the public security bureau on Jan. 12 with Tu’s father and sister, requesting she be released on bail. Though they were told the officers would respond at a later date, they have still received no answer, nearly a month later.

Ren also petitioned the procuratorate to reexamine the grounds for Tu’s detention.

Despite Tu’s insistence that she is a Christian, the public security bureau claimed she was a member of the cult organization “Three Classes of Servants.” In order to prove this hypothesis, the procuratorate gathered 12 files containing 2,400 pages of falsified evidence, which Ren examined and found repetitive.
Tu claimed she’d heard of a similar occurrence in Chuxiong City, Yunnan, when two clergywomen who were accused of cult involvement for doing ministry work.

China Aid reports on the arrests and detentions of Christians like Tu Yan in order to expose illegal government interference and religious freedom abuses in China.

ChinaAid Media Team
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