Steve Laverty with a salutary tale of his experience
26 October 2016 was the day the Chinese authorities arrested four Northern Irish lads for moving Bibles from Hong Kong (HK) into China. I was one of them.
Right at the start, I must stress that the Chinese Government already knows any details that I reveal here.
Christianity is legal in HK. In 1997, Queen Elizabeth officially handed this previously independent Commonwealth state back to the Chinese Government. However, 20 years later, naturalised HK residents are beginning to understand the gravity of the impending handover completion.
God’s Word needed
Access to Bibles has always been an issue in China. A few churches are sanctioned by the Chinese Government, but House Churches are still illegal and the government is actively continuing to shut them down. Purchasing a Bible can be difficult and not even half the Christians in China own one.
I arrived in HK on 22 October. During the first two days of our mission we had roughly a 50% success rate in getting Bibles across the border. When stopped by customs some or all of the Bibles were confiscated and, in a handful of previous extreme cases, people had their visas revoked.
I had made two successful trips across the border and the 26 October trip was no different. I went through, intending to meet everyone at a pre-designated spot on the far side of Chinese customs. I found one of the guys alone at the rendezvous point, so we assumed that the other four, including the leader, had been stopped. After an hour or so, I managed to locate members from another group who had come through after us, so we linked up and progressed to our drop-off point further into China. There’s an unwritten rule that girls don’t pack vans and so they remained in the station, while I along with the three other guys (one of whom is an 80-year-old legend…) went to help the courier pack the van.
Surrounded by police officers
We got to the van and the courier opened the boot. But. as I turned to grab another bag, I noticed a plain-looking guy standing nearby filming us with a camcorder. I didn’t think much of it, but, when I turned to walk away, the next thing I knew was that ten plain-clothed officers produced badges and began shouting at us to stop what we were doing. Around 15 uniformed police officers then formed a ring around both us and the van. We were in serious trouble.
A female officer began asking for passports. Everyone was in a state of shock, but I managed to get mine out and handed it to her, then everyone else followed suit.
A planned operation
We had been caught up in what was clearly a planned operation. The plain-clothed officers examined all our passports before we were told we were going to the police station to answer some questions. Next, I was bundled into the back of an unmarked car and was on my way with the other three, along with a motorcycle escort.
So, picture the scene: we’ve been brought to a police station and placed into a holding room. It’s hot, it’s scary, there are bars on the windows, we’re not allowed to speak to each other and we most certainly cannot leave. What followed was a series of official and unofficial interrogations. Apparently we weren’t entitled to either legal or consular representation because our rights ‘hadn’t been violated’. After a couple of hours, I was taken away by myself and interrogated by what I later discovered were officers from the Ministry of Sports and Culture. I was the first person to be spoken to by them and it lasted about 40 minutes.
The interrogation
The questioning went something like this:
How did you know the others? / I didn’t know them before I arrived.
How could you not know them? / A friend of mine asked me if I would go and help the Christian church in China, as there were so many who couldn’t afford Bibles.
How did you know where to meet the team when you arrived? / We used WhatsApp.
When did you get to Hong Kong? / Late on 22 October.
Where did you stay? / I don’t know the address, in an apartment in Sheng Suei.
How did you know where to go when you arrived? / Andy had instructed us via email.
Who is Andy? / He runs the organisation.
Where is he from? / I don’t know, he has an English accent.
What is his surname? / I don’t know.
How did he contact you in the first place? / Through the church in Ireland.
What church? / The Baptist church.
Are you a Christian? / Yes.
How did you know where to get the Bibles? / Andy told us in an email to go to the office.
Where is the office? / I can’t remember.
How did you know how to get there on the first day? / One of the others had been before.
How did you know where to take the Bibles? / Andy told us where to go when we picked up the Bibles from the office in the suitcases.
Did you pack the suitcase? / No.
Who did? / I don’t know.
Did you get paid for taking these Bibles over? / No. I paid for my own flights and accommodation here. I only wanted to help people get Bibles in China and I’m doing it for free.
What happens to the books once you give them to the courier? / I don’t know.
Did you know it is illegal to bring literature into China that is not approved by the govern- ment? / No. I knew it was okay for people to be Christians in China, so I thought it was OK to bring in Bibles.
After that interrogation I was allowed to return to the holding room with one of the other guys before he was called out. A short time later I was brought out again to take part in a second interrogation, but they asked me mostly the same stuff as before.
The police officers seemed okay; however, ultimately I hadn’t a clue what was going on as they would talk and seemingly argue for five or ten minutes before they would get the interpreter to ask me a basic question. We also had an officer from the security services in plain clothes in the holding room with us at all times, who was clearly fluent in English and tasked with garnering live information from us. Thankfully we had three interpreters who seemed sympathetic and did their best to reassure us.
‘We are going to arrest foreigners’
They told us the Ministry of Sport and Culture had initiated the investigation and been conducting surveillance for two months and they had been brought in that morning in advance of our arrival and briefed that they would be required as foreigners were being arrested later that day.
Once everyone had been interrogated twice, we were all allowed into the same room together. This was the first opportunity we had to talk and one of the guys explained that the Chief of Police had said that searches of safe houses linked to the organisation in HK had uncovered around 35,000 Bibles and we would be facing either prison or a serious fine. We had nothing else to do at that point but stand together in the police station and pray that God would somehow save us from that situation and set us free.
Sign and fingerprint
An hour later, typed records of our interrogations were provided for us all to sign and fingerprint, then all we could do was wait. A further half hour went by with police officers pacing the corridor holding our passports. At this point I’d spent almost nine hours in custody. The seat I spent most of that time in had a view of a bridge which crossed the river/ border into HK directly beyond the bars.
Eventually, the female officer who I’d initially spoken to all those hours before walked in, handed out our passports and said: ‘You can go.’ Just like that, we walked out the door, down the corridor, down a winding staircase, out the front door, past a guardroom and on to the train station. We then swiftly crossed the Chinese border back into HK.
Being followed
It didn’t take long to work out that we were being followed. The most blatant proof came the following day as I was coming down an escalator in a HK shopping centre, where a guy stood at the bottom and videoed me with his phone as I came towards him.
After talking to other team members, it became apparent that we needed to leave the country, so we changed our flights and left HK that same evening.
I’m aware there are many ministries conducting similar work in China and I feel that, since we’re the first Westerners to be arrested for this kind of activity, it’s a pretty big deal which should not be understated. The distributor linked to the organisation was arrested during raids that day and is still in prison.
The Chinese Government has clamped down on all forms of Christianity that aren’t officially sanctioned since the law change in September. The practice of smuggling Bibles into the country is outdated and those running it aren’t equipped to safely manage volunteers or guarantee they won’t end up in prison. Our arrest was a shot across the bows and I’m confident that people doing this kind of work in the future, if caught, will end up in prison.
EDITOR’S COMMENT
After consulting with some China experts, it is worth adding to Steve’s comments at the end of the article that while Bible smuggling into China might have been necessary 20 years ago, today Chinese Christians are able to obtain Bibles through legal channels in the country. Indeed, you can go into the equivalent of Foyles in Shanghai and buy books by Dr Marytn Lloyd-Jones and other Reformed works, which is more than you could do at Foyles in London!
