“Things are getting unbearable,” Pastor Lin (not his real name) said over the phone yesterday. “Some of the people in our church have run out of food, there are reports of suicides.”

Pastor Lin has been working with BTJ for many years and what he is reporting is also being verified through different channels. Desperate reports are flooding social media as citizens are unable to access food, medicine, baby food, and other essentials.

The people in Shanghai were aware that they would be forced into lockdown, but when the time for the lockdown was unexpectedly extended by the authorities mid-lockdown, it left many people unprepared for a longer period.

Shanghai is seeing an increase in Covid cases, but this is mostly due to mandatory testing. Many of those testing positive are asymptomatic and, as of now, there have not been any Covid-related deaths.

Like a scene from a sci-fi movie, China is now using drones to fly into neighborhoods announcing, “Please comply with covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”

Click here to watch the clip

The conditions have created a food shortage in other major cities in China, where many are preparing to go through what Shanghai’s 26 million residents are currently experiencing. The situation is causing panic waves throughout the nation. Shanghai is not the only city in China under lockdown at the moment. Many other large cities in China have also implemented extreme lockdown policies for the first two weeks of April.

People can be heard screaming outside just to connect with one another.

 

One foreigner reports directly from inside Shanghai’s Covid-detention facilities, which ironically, instead of separating people by allowing them to stay home, piles hundreds of people on top of each other for weeks at a time, forcing them to share the same toilets and showering facilities.

While other nations around the world, like Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Poland, Switzerland, and others, have dropped all Covid-19 rules, China has gone backwards and implemented the world’s strictest policies.

Human Rights groups find China’s term “lockdown” concerning. “The use of the word ‘lockdown’ can be quite imprecise when used in China compared with the rest of the world,” said Maya Wang, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, feeling that China’s use of the common term does not fully capture the severity of the situation.

China have consistently locked up political and religious dissidents, Muslim Uyghers in western China, Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and Christian believers throughout the nation. China is also known for their notorious use of black prisons – or prisons that are not registered as detention facilities. Instead, China’s black prisons are secret locations where the authorities can lock up who ever they choose and keep them for long periods of time without trial or record. Sometimes, those individuals can simply disappear without a trace.

Pastor Lin has sent one important message – “please pray.”

Please pray for the Christians in Shanghai and share this article with as many people as possible, so that others can join in prayer.

Episode 638: Crisis In China – World’s Largest Prisons & Extreme Lockdowns