Much has been reported about internment camps for Uyghur Muslims in Northeast China. However, Christians, Buddhists, Kazakh people, and other perceived threats to the communist government are also imprisoned in the camps.
A Han Chinese Christian couple who left their home to plant churches among Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were imprisoned for two years for their Christian work.
The couple, who led an unregistered house church, were arrested and pressured to sign statements rejecting their Christian faith.
When they refused, they were imprisoned in a re-education camp. The couple spent most of each day sitting rigidly on stools in a large room as government propaganda droned from loudspeakers. They were finally released and warned to keep quiet about their experience in the re-education camp. Although they remain under heavy surveillance, they are still committed to serving the Lord in China.
This is a common practice throughout China: Christians being subjected to communist indoctrination. This can occur not only in the re-education camps but also in prison, in government schools and in society at large. One goal of Chinese prisons is to reform a prisoner into a ‘new man’ who fully subscribes to communist ideology.
Based on more than 800 documented arrests of Christians in 2017 and 2018, it is fair to estimate that several thousand Christians are currently imprisoned in China where they are subjected to daily indoctrination in communist values.
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1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace and Wonderful Counsellor, your return is unstoppable and resolute in the Father’s will. Hear our prayer for your many brothers and sisters in concentration/re-education camps in China. Give them joy as they suffer for your name’s sake and help them to endure the propaganda, which is constantly paraded before their minds, keeping their eyes fixed on you and the hope before them. We ask especially that grace, power and hope fill our other and sister(the Han Chinese couple), by your mighty Spirit, that they might continue to witness faithfully and look to the Day of Jesus’ return, when all things will be reconciled, the books balanced as it were (Colossians 1:21-23), and your name glorified above all. Lord, please show mercy.