Chinese Christian Activist Claims Government Behind Her Kidnapping, Rape
A Christian woman has claimed that local government-hired security personnel kidnapped her as she left church and raped her during her visit to the capital city of Beijing two months ago.
Zhu Guiqin, who lives in the province of Liaoning, traveled to Beijing in April and alleges that her assailants were illegal government-sponsored security personnel from her local province, which is situated northeast of the Chinese capital.
"It was about 5 p.m. of April 11, when I walked out of Beijing Gangwasi Church. I was going to take a bus right across the street from the church entrance when three men ran up to me by the bus stop, grabbed me and pushed me into a minivan parked up the street," according to a statement recounting the incident published by human rights and religious freedom organization ChinaAid.
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The Beijing Gangwasi Church is one of the seven major churches in Beijing and has some 5,000 regular parishioners.
It is unclear why, if the allegations prove true, Zho was harassed and brutalized, but the nearly 50-year-old victim had been previously detained and punished in 2004 for petitioning in Beijing for "her rights and interests," according to ChinaAid.
As a result of her 2004 detainment, Zho served a three-year sentence at a labor camp where she endured "indescribable torture and persecutions," according to the human rights and religious freedom organization.
ChinaAid believes that Zho had been targeted this past April for offending her local government by continuing to travel to Beijing to petition national government authorities for her rights and interests, despite her 2004 detainment.
According to Zho, her attackers did not provide a reason for targeting her, but did confirm the Liaoning Fushun government's involvement.
"Don't hate us. Hate your local government. We don't understand either why your local government hates you so much. They asked us to kill you in five days," Zhu recounted her alleged assailants as saying.
The hired security personnel eventually brought Zho home after two days of detainment. It reportedly took her over a month to report the crime due to restrictions placed on her by the local government. Police officials in Beijing have said they are investigating the case, but thus far the case is not formally on file, according to Zho's lawyer Lin Qilei.
Calls to the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the U.N. and to the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in New York were not immediately returned.
