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Bloody footprints
At the press conference and in subsequent interviews with CT, Liu recounted how in 2001 she was isolated for special interrogation at a police training center in central China. "I was put in a bedroom with seven male police surrounding me, laughing and touching my body." One of the policemen pawed at her body. She told CT, "A fat guy came up and kicked me, saying, 'Glorious indeed, believing in a foreign god rather than the Communist Party!' "

The police then tried to get Liu to confess that Pastor Gong had used her as a sexual concubine.

Liu says that after several rounds of beatings, she was so wounded that wherever she walked, she left behind a trail of bloody footprints. Still defiant, the police stripped her of her clothing and started using electric cattle prods on her. At one point they forced an electric cattle prod into her mouth to shock her. Afterwards, Liu says that her mouth was covered with blisters.

After a period of softening up, the local police superintendent himself took over Liu's interrogation. Liu told ct that he repeatedly held her up in the air by her hair before throwing her to the ground.

During the interview, Liu used nicknames that members of the South China Church developed to describe each abusive technique. Liu says that the first time she was imprisoned in 1996 that it was called "walking past the field," which means that instead of a neighborly "Hello," the police say, "First, we will teach you a lesson by beating you up."

When the police put an electric cattle prod on her, she told CT that she was "passing through the electricity." Then, when the police forced the prod into her mouth, she was forced to "eat the electric stick."

Police instigated other prisoners to force Liu to "watch TV," which means that she was forced to stand on one leg while the prisoners turned her around by twisting her ear to change "TV channels." South China Church men arrested with Liu received "salty sticky rice" torture. They were forced to take off their pants so that their bare bottoms could be beaten and their wounds covered with salt.

The legal charges against Liu were eventually dropped, but she was still sentenced to three years of labor camp by administrative order.

Released on February 1, 2004, Liu told CT that she was determined to escape her close surveillance so that she could give the full story of the Chinese government's judicial misconduct against Pastor Gong. Disguised as a young daughter of an elderly parent, the diminutive Liu was able to make her escape from China in January.

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Earlier Christianity Today coverage of Pastor Shengliang Gong includes:

Gong's 'Accusers' Claim Torture Induced False Confessions | Letters from imprisoned Christian women in China describe assaults with electric clubs (Feb. 01, 2002)

Church Leader Gets Reprieve | China's case against Gong Shengliang now on hold. (Jan. 24, 2002)

Chinese House Church Leader Granted Time to Appeal Death Sentence | Sentence likely to be commuted to imprisonment, but church remains in danger. (Jan. 8, 2002)

More Christianity Today articles about China include:

Behind China's Closed Doors | Newly confident house churches open themselves up to the world. (Feb. 07, 2005)

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February (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49