Persecution Continues for Pastor Shi Enhao’s Suqian House Church

China Aid Association
(Suqian city, Jiangsu – Nov. 17, 2011) Officials in coastal Jiangsu province are keeping up the pressure against the house church of the deputy chairman of the Chinese House Church Alliance, and the beleaguered church members are appealing for prayer, ChinaAid has learned.
Following the July sentencing of their pastor Shi Enhao (see photo at right) to a two-year re-education-through-labor sentence, local officials have not relented in their persecution of the Suqian  house church.

On Aug. 12, three elders were taken into custody, and one – Wu Changle – was administratively detained for five days, although the detention order has yet to be enforced.
On Oct. 1, church leader Chang Meiling was taken away by police and Domestic Security Protection agents.  She was held under house arrest for two days.
In the latest move against the church, on Monday, Nov. 14, the Suqian Religious Affairs Bureau, the Public Security Bureau, the neighborhood security team, and officials of the Three-Self Patriotic church summoned the leaders of the Suqian church and threatened them, saying that the China House Church Alliance was an illegally organization that must be suppressed.  They added that their pastor, Shi Enhao, was sentenced to two years of re-education-through-labor for illegally establishing a church and ordered those who belong to his house church to worship at the Three-Self church.  Otherwise, they would be arrested.
They also forced Shi Enhao’s son, Shi Shuiyang, to sign documents promising to go worship at the Three-Self church, and ordered elder Wu Changle to report to the police within seven days to begin serving the administrative detention that was ordered on Aug. 12.
The Suqian church is now being strictly monitored and is under tremendous pressure, and has appealed for prayers on their behalf.
ChinaAid calls on the Suqian authorities to stop their persecution of Suqian Church and to uphold the rights of these citizens to religious freedom and to basic civil rights.
See ChinaAid’s earlier reports:
https://chinaaid.org/2011/10/house-church-of-pastor-shi-enhao-in.html;
https://chinaaid.org/2011/08/chinese-house-church-alliance-is-target.html;
https://chinaaid.org/2011/08/persecution-escalates-against-jiangsus.html

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