Interviews with Xiqiu "Bob" Fu

After we were released, we were put under house arrest. And four state security officials were assigned to basically watch out and follow us. And we were told to report every visitor, any telephone calls. So we’re basically not having much opportunity to continue our ministry.

And then my wife was pregnant, without a pregnancy permission card. You need in China, even for the first child, despite of the one child policy, the first child after you’re married, you have to get a permission card to get pregnant before you are legally allowed.

So if the government Family Planning official found that, she will face a forced abortion. And then one of my friends who were working in the Communist Party Public Security system informed me that I was on the re-arrest list before October the first, Chinese National Day. Usually before that time, the security officer will run up all — they call “the old friends” — back to prison in order to show their stability of the society to the outside world.

So we were advised to just flee out of Beijing first, because we’re not allowed even to leave Beijing and leave our apartment. And I myself was already fired by the Communist Party School from my job. So we just at one night, decide to escape from Beijing first to keep our baby. No hospital in Beijing was allowed to even do a basic checkup. And we tried. But even those Christians who were working at the hospital refused to do checkup because they could lose their job.

So yeah, I jumped at the middle of night out of a window from the toilet room in a second story floor building. And my wife disguised herself as somebody else. So we just flee out of Beijing and hiding in the countryside among some house church families.

It took us a few months, like three months, before we were able to escape out of China through Thailand and then to Hong Kong. So in Hong Kong we were seeking refugee status. And you know, tried to come to the U.S.

But we were waiting for about eight months in Hong Kong. So actually three days before Hong Kong was turned over to China in 1997, we were accepted as American refugees. And we landed in the U.S. on June 27, 1997, as U.S. refugees.

Bob Fu was a leader in the student democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989. He later converted to Christianity and became a house church pastor and a founder, along with his wife Heidi, of a Bible school. In 1996, he was arrested and jailed for running a secret bible school. After his release, he and his wife escaped to Hong Kong. They were admitted to the United States as refugees a few days before the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.

Fu founded the China Aid Association (CAA) in 2002. CAA monitors and reports on religious freedom in China, particularly focusing on the fate of believers who belong to banned or unofficial house churches, which encompass 60 to 80 million followers. CAA issues frequent news releases on cases of religious persecution involving Protestant house church congregations and assists victims to assert their right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religious practice in China.

CAA also provides a forum for discussion and information exchange among experts on religion, law, and human rights in China through its bilingual journal, the China Law & Religion Monitor, and a bilingual website. Its headquarters are in Midland, Texas, where Fu now lives and works.