1997 - Huang Kaihuo

April 1997

Sipu, Jiangxi

Huang Kaihuo was a house church pastor from the town of Sipu in Hengfeng County, Jiangxi Province. Huang was a simple man from a farming background, as were all the other members of his church. None of them was highly educated, but they loved the Lord Jesus Christ and longed for others to experience his salvation.

On April 23, 1997, the Sipu Town Office sent an officer who ordered Huang to appear at the Office of Political and Legal Affairs. This was the beginning of a chain of tragic events that led to the pastor’s ferocious murder. When he arrived at the Town Office the officials asked him to sit down. They explained that his church was illegal because it was not registered with the Religious Affairs Bureau. Huang explained that the congregation consisted of uneducated people who did not know how to apply for registration.

The officials chained Huang’s feet and hands for 26 hours and ordered him to pay a 6,000 Yuan (approximately US$700) fine on behalf of the church. The average wage of a farmer in this part of Jiangxi was only about 300 Yuan ($35) per year, making the request an impossible one to meet. They released Huang and ordered him to return with the money the next day.

On April 28th Huang was summoned again. This time the officials held him for 14 hours, threatening him with severe consequences if he did not cooperate. That night Huang told his daughter, Huang Xiaohua, that he had been instructed to pay a personal fine of 300 Yuan ($350) by nine o’clock the next morning, and then lead the police to every believer’s home until they had collected a total of 6,000 Yuan. Failure to do so would result in his arrest and imprisonment. Intimidated by the threats, Huang borrowed the 300 Yuan from friends and went to the Town Office the next morning. When he failed to return home by noon his daughter was concerned and went to the office to ask about her father. They told Xiaohua that her father had never come. Huang Xiaohua later recounted what happened next:

“I hurried back home and asked some people to go to look for my father. Two days passed, but we could not find him. My heart was filled with grief and indignation! How come my father had disappeared? It wasn’t until May 1st at around 6:00 in the evening, a 14-year-old village child found my father’s body while picking up mushrooms in the mountain at the back of our house.

I saw my father’s body lying on the ground, fully covered with injuries and blood. The chains left deep marks on his wrists and feet. His chest swelled and became black…. We could not stand the scene. The whole family fell into deep grief. All the village residents cried with us. I almost died of grief…. About 10:00 p.m. we had his body carried home.”[1]

The mayor of Sipu came to Huang’s village the next day and announced that no officials or police had anything to do with the death. This lie angered the people. The mayor left and ordered a crackdown on the villagers. More than 20 people were beaten by the police. On May 5th the town officials offered the Huang family 1,600 Yuan ($190) to help them bury the corpse. They said the offer only was on condition that the body was buried immediately.

The family again complained and threatened to get to the bottom of the case and discover who had killed their beloved father. This angered the officials who called in more than 100 policemen and Public Security officers. Xiaohua said they came and “forcibly took away my father’s coffin and buried him in the mountain while guarded by the police in case someone would interrupt.”[2] Several days later the government produced an autopsy report which claimed Huang had “died of a stroke and then committed suicide by poisoning himself.” They failed to explain how a man who had died of a stroke could then poison himself!

The Huang family continued to fight the government for official recognition of their crimes and for compensation. The family plunged into debt and struggled to cope with the emotional impact of the sorry episode. They lodged official complaints with the General Office of the State Council, the Central Committee of Political and Legal Commission, The Ministry of State Security, The Ministry of Justice, and several other legal bodies, but by 2006—a full nine years after Huang’s martyrdom—his family had still received no compensation, nor had any investigation been initiated.

1. Jeremy Reynalds, “Chinese Christian Killed After Allegedly Refusing to Give in to Extortion Demand,” Assist News Service (September 27, 2004).
2. Reynalds, “Chinese Christian Killed.”