Beijing reportedly considers him to be more dangerous than slain al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. That should explain the harsh treatment that detained Christian human rights lawyer Li Heping has been subjected to.
In a report by the Christian human rights organisation China Aid, Li's wife, Wang Qiaoling, confirmed that her husband and another detained Christian lawyer, Wang Quanzhang, had been subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture..
The two lawyers had been charged with "subverting state power."
In an apparent indication of the gravity of the torture, Li's wife told China Aid that her husband fainted several times during one electric shock session.
Li and Wang were first taken into police custody in 2015 as part of a nationwide round-up of human rights lawyers in China, according to China Aid. However, Li reportedly "vanished" while in police custody that year.
He apparently reappeared and was formally arrested on Jan. 20, 2016, and has since then been locked up at the Tianjin Municipal Detention Center No.1.
A Chinese security agent once told a reporter from The Guardian that Beijing considers Li to be "more dangerous than Bin Laden."
When he was still a free man, Li told the British publication that, "Chinese say that they are living inside a prison. If you are detained, you are in a smaller prison. If you are released, you are in a bigger prison."
Aside from Christian lawyers, human rights activists, pastors and churchgoers have also suffered as a result of the Chinese Communist Party's continuing crackdown on people who are deemed threats to the establishment.
Last week, a Chinese female church leader reportedly went on trial over allegations of "illegal business operations."
Zhang Xiuhong, a deacon at the Guiyang Huoshi Church in Guizhou province, was detained by local police in July 2015, China Aid reported.
Earlier this January, Pastor Yang Hua, also known as Li Guozhi, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on a charge of "divulging state secrets."
Police arrested Yang after he reportedly tried to stop officials from confiscating the church computer hard drives when they raided Huoshi Church in December 2015.
Just like other human rights detainees, Yang had also suffered torture while in prison, according to his lawyers.
"This is nothing but purely barbaric religious persecution," said Bob Fu, president and founder of China Aid.
China is ranked 39th on the latest Open Door USA's World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution.
