The crackdown against Mentuhui which started again in May 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government continues to haunt the members of the neo-religious movement to this day. Bitterwinter.org reports that the key leaders continue to be arrested even in November with no let up in the harrassment and torture of its followers. The crackdown on Mentuhui is as lethal as the suppression of the Falun Gong if not more, say the members who took risk to report the arrests to the outside world. Following Mentuhui has been banned in China since 1990.
The Association of Disciples, or Mentuhui, is a Chinese neo-religious movement based on Christianity which was founded in 1989 but was banned by the CCP government the next year. In 1995, it was included in the list of the xie jiao. The Chinese expression ‘xie jiao’ is translated in Chinese official documents into English as “cults” or “evil cults.” The Mentuhui movement has significantly downsized since its leader Ji Sanbao died in 1997, but the CCP has never stopped persecuting its followers.
Though the persecution of the movement has continued since its ban in 1990, targeted crackdown was resumed in May this year. Local police carried out an operation targeting their church and the movement members from Baotou city in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region between May 18 and 28. Nearly 100 members, including two key deacons were arrested. Those arrested have been reportedly tortured and forced to give an undertaking denouncing the movement.
During interrogations, the police told believers that being active in religious groups labelled as xie jiao is a “subversion of state power,” and those who are involved in it would be punished severely. A member of the Association of Disciples from Baotou informed Bitterwinter that a National Security Brigade officer who interrogated one of the arrested preachers told him that his child, a good pupil at school that wants to study in college, won’t be able to study or have any future because of his father’s faith. During interrogation of the members, the police revealed that they monitored them for nearly three months and obtained their phone records and collected information on all church members who have been to their houses and further track other members.
The report in Bitterwinter says that between June and September this year, the Dezhou city police in the eastern province of Shandong arrested nearly 100 Mentuhui followers. Five key church leaders were charged with “using a xie jiao organization to disrupt law enforcement” and are still kept in custody or under house arrest. Most of the arrested members have police records for previous investigations into their membership in the banned movement. A released church member recalled that in order to make the arrested believers reveal information about their church, the police forced them to watch other arrested people being tortured.
In June and July, at least 35 members of the Association of Disciples were arrested in Luzhou city and Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in the southwestern province of Sichuan after searching their homes and confiscating religious materials. A church member in his 60s was beaten with electric batons. Some other members were forced to renounce their faith to be released. The police even went to the workplaces of some church members to inquire about their faith.
The CCP organizes large-scale propaganda campaigns and sets up tip-off systems to encourage the population to report banned religious movements. Three hundred twenty-nine members of the Association of Disciples were arrested last year in the northwestern province of Qinghai, also in Yunnan, Sichuan, and other provinces. Even after they are released, the police tell them to keep their cell phones on 24 hours a day and not leave the area and threaten to deprive their children of opportunities to go to colleges or become public servants if they did not give up their belief.
The crackdown on Mentuhui is reminiscent of the brutal crackdown on Falun Gong, another faith which is on the xie jiao list of the CCP. Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. It blocked Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a “heretical organization” that threatened social stability.
Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labour, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities.
Aayush Pal 
Balaji Subramanian 
Palak Dogra