Chinese pastor Ding Shuqi details torture and urges world to pressure Xi on religious freedom

Ding Shuqi, a pastor of the persecuted Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, addressed an audience at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, detailing his personal experience of imprisonment and torture by Chinese authorities. He explained that the church was banned in 2018, its property seized, and he was charged with "illegal business operations," spending five months in a cell identified only as PO7 and subjected to a painful stress position known as "the dragon holding the pillar."

Ding noted that other members, including Dai Zhichao, Li Yingqiang and Jia Xuewei, remain detained on charges that could carry up to 20 years, and that his fellow pastor Wang Yi is serving a nine-year sentence. He warned that such repression is widespread across China’s house churches, with police able to raid gatherings at any time. Ding called on the international community to use every tool to press President Xi Jinping to honor religious freedom, a plea that comes as Xi prepares for his first formal state visit to the United States since 2015.