The New York Times in June published details of a fascinating interview with Mr. Zhang, the claimed author of a note written in English and allegedly smuggled out of the Masanjia labour camp while he was imprisoned there.
The letter was discovered by a woman in Oregon, USA, who found it stashed in a box of Halloween decorations that were packaged at the labour camp. The letter revealed that conditions in the camp were ‘a living hell’ and that about half the camp’s occupants were either Falun Gong practitioners or members of underground house churches.
In late 2012, China Aid, a human rights organisation dedicated to assisting Chinese Christians who face abuses of religious freedom, published a report citing an increase of 131.8% in the number of Christians imprisoned by the Chinese government over the course of 2012. The report was alarming and controversial, but recent research conducted on the ground by International Christian Concern (ICC) has confirmed that Christians still face arrest and imprisonment in large numbers, despite the overall impression that China has curtailed repression of religious minorities in recent years.
