God's Double Agent (39 page)

I don’t know what percentage of ChinaAid’s success is due to Midland. But I know that the generosity of their churches helped prepare us to fight for the plight of the persecuted on an even grander scale.

Sadly, we’d have many more opportunities.

27

“This is China’s most expensive drink,” Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs said, as he prepared to make a toast. “And it just happens to also come from my hometown.”

Deborah watched as the clear alcohol, Maotai, was poured into her little glass, and braced herself. Maotai, which dates back to the Qing Dynasty, is an enormous part of Chinese history. Ever since Mao and his Long March comrades used it to cleanse their war wounds, it’s been a part of Chinese lore and a staple at state banquets. Mao famously offered it to Richard Nixon in 1972, who—against the advice of his aids—freely imbibed.

Deborah had made a special trip to Beijing in January 2008 so she could speak face-to-face with the world leaders. As a member of the famed Midland Ministerial Alliance, she was escorted to meet Minister Ye, who was responsible for implementing all of China’s religious policy—good or bad. He treated her with much dignity and prepared a lavish feast in her honor.

That’s when she was faced with a glass of 106 proof alcohol. She knew she shouldn’t drink much of it, but she put her lips on the glass and tried not to choke. Dan Rather famously described the drink as “liquid razor blades,” but Deborah knew this was one of the highest demonstrations of respect. Distilled from
fermented sorghum, the alcohol has a lingering aroma of soy sauce. The cheapest bottle costs over three hundred dollars, and a 1980 bottle sold last year for $1.3 million.

After she had successfully managed Minister Ye’s toast, he made another. And another. Deborah, however, couldn’t drink as much as was expected of her. When Minister Ye noticed that she was merely sipping her drink, he took her glass and poured most of it into his own cup. Culturally, only very close friends—or a subordinate for his supervisor—would do that in China.

The feast was elaborate and festive, as the Chinese government spared no expense. Deborah assumed this was all done to impress the “housewife” from the “tribe of the President.” However, between courses, Minister Ye turned to Deborah and said, very innocently, “Do you happen to know a man named Bob Fu?” Suddenly, all of the attention and luxurious food made sense. He was trying to buy Deborah’s influence over me.

“Yes,” she said. “We’re very close.”

“Really?” He acted shocked that she’d associate with such a man. “I wish I could have a close friendship with you like Bob Fu.”

“His children call me Grandma,” she added.

“Well, he’s reporting ugly things about China.”

“I know Bob’s heart,” Deborah said. “He doesn’t want to misrepresent China. He loves his motherland.” This “Texas housewife” was not going to yield an inch. “In fact, Bob Fu wants all of these persecution cases to disappear so he’ll have nothing left to report. Only you can make that happen.”

At the end of the banquet, Minister Ye and Deborah had developed a strong trust. Right before she left, with much flourish, he presented Deborah with two bottles of Maotai. In China, officials aren’t supposed to give bribes, so Maotai is a well-known substitute. “This is for you to take back to America.”

She accepted the lavish gift, and said, “Let’s build a protocol on how to handle those ‘ugly things’ Bob reports about you. In
the next few months, there will be some cases. A house church leader might be sent to labor camp or a new believer to prison. When that happens, we won’t go to the media. Instead, we’ll come straight to you.”

In exchange for our moratorium on media exposure, the director promised to handle the human rights violations. And so, Deborah became ChinaAid’s diplomatic go-between, privately communicating with China’s Bureau of Religious Affairs when the inevitable violations occurred. And they definitely happened. In the two months of our good faith effort, however, we never got a positive result. In fact, Minister Ye never even followed up.

Later, when Minister Ye came to the United States for a visit, Deborah hosted a lavish dinner for him at a very nice restaurant in a five-star hotel in Washington, DC. Since he had given her such an extravagant gift of Maotai, she wanted to present him with something even more valuable. She bought a bilingual Bible and had me highlight all of the Scriptures about loving each other. When he came to the table, he saw the gift and flipped through the pages. Suddenly, his face contorted with rage.

“Love is not proud,” he read from one of the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians. “It does not dishonor others . . . it is not self-seeking? Bob Fu doesn’t follow these writings!”

Suddenly, everyone in the room got quiet as he went on a political diatribe against me. The Chinese embassy diplomats were shocked that he was expressing such disgust with Deborah’s gift. When his anger subsided, he looked around the room and was immediately embarrassed. “You are the host and here I am doing a political speech,” he said, his face splotchy from his diminishing anger. “I’m so sorry.”

Deborah also handed him a letter I’d written him, inviting him to come to Midland to talk about the issues with me face-to-face. Needless to say, he didn’t accept the invitation.

However, I still lived in Ye’s mind. This became evident when John Hanford, who led the Office of International Religious Freedom in the State Department, held a private, friendly dinner for Minister Ye. During the dinner, John turned to him and said, “Let’s talk about persecution in your country. Last year alone . . .” Then, John proceeded to list the names of many persecuted Christians.

As soon as Minister Ye heard this, he exclaimed, “This is from Bob Fu!”

I’m sure he was thinking,
I can’t even get into the White House, yet this poor guy from Shiziyuan Village feeds them all this terrible information.
And certainly, as Minister Ye undoubtedly knew, this was not the first time I had made President Bush aware of such “terrible information.”

In 2004, my old friend Zhuohua Cai—who set up the illegal training center in the China countryside and ran the illegal printing press—had gotten in trouble. By this time, he was a prominent Beijing house church leader, still printing Bibles and giving them away free of charge. He kept a stash of Christian literature in a warehouse, far from the eyes of the Public Security Bureau. However, on September 11, he was waiting at a bus stop when state security agents drove up in a van, arrested him, and charged him with “illegal business practices.” He was fined 150,000 yuan ($18,500) and sentenced to three years in prison. Apparently, the police had discovered his warehouse, which had over two hundred thousand pieces of printed Christian literature and Bibles—the largest “foreign religious infiltration” in the history of the People’s Republic of China. While Pastor Cai was in jail, along with his wife and brother-in-law, he was tortured with electric cattle prods. I immediately hired Zhang Xingshui, a prominent attorney at Beijing’s Jingding Law Firm, to defend my old friend.

In April 2005, I had an amazing opportunity to bring up Pastor Cai’s case in an internationally significant way. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights invited me to deliver a formal speech during the General Assembly on Religious Intolerance. I was very honored, because the UNCHR was the highest authority on this earth with the stated mission to protect and promote human rights for all. I traveled to Geneva with a team of people, including Deborah Fikes, my assistant Melissa Rasmussen, and our first underground railroad survivor, Sarah Liu. The non-governmental organization (NGO) A Woman’s Voice International was kind enough to sponsor me at the conference, a requirement for all of the guest speakers. They also set up a special briefing in one of the UN’s smaller conference rooms, where Sarah gave her testimony about how she was sentenced to death as a member of the South China Church, tortured viciously in prison, and escaped.

Later that week, it was time for me to deliver my remarks. As I sat at my desk, I was a little nervous watching people filter in. Gradually the semicircle of desks—in one of the largest conference rooms at the Palais des Nations in Geneva—filled with delegates. I’d spoken at the UN before, but this time the atmosphere was particularly lively. There were many NGO representatives, government delegates, and more than sixty UNCHR elected members lined up to speak during that two weeks. Each NGO rep was only allotted about eight minutes, so I made sure to pack as much information into my speech as possible.

“Mr. Chairman, A Woman’s Voice International would like to draw to the attention of this commission the plight of three leaders of the Chinese house church movement who have experienced persecution at the hands of state authorities in the People’s Republic of China,” I began. It felt a little awkward to be detailing the abuses of the Chinese government right in
front of their delegation; however, they refused to meet with me personally in advance. I plunged ahead, describing several cases of abuse and torture of Christians in China, beginning with my friend Cai.

The room was filled with hundreds of people, who all spoke in different languages and were arranged by country. While I talked, there was a lot of action in the room, people milling around, looking at notes, making connections with old friends, laughing, preparing for their own speeches. No one was really paying attention to my speech.

“Though China has amended its constitution to protect human rights,” I continued, leaning close to the microphone to allow my voice to carry, “these cases exemplify both the arbitrary nature of what passes for justice in the People’s Republic of China and the sad state of religious freedom there.”

Still, no one was listening.

“Mr. Chairman, I’d now like for you to pay special attention. I’m holding an electric shock baton identical to those used to torture Christians, including Pastor Cai.”

Then I pulled out the electric shock baton, about the size of a flashlight, that I’d smuggled out of China. I didn’t smuggle it into the UN, however. Deborah and I had gotten permission from the Secretariat’s office before my speech. Also, I’d brought the baton through several layers of security. In other words, the UN had already approved of my electric baton demonstration.

Nonetheless, when I held the baton above my head and pressed the button, the cacophony of elbow rubbing and mingling suddenly stopped. For six seconds, people heard the staticky, unmistakable sound of an electric current. No one said a word. Were they wondering what that current might feel like against their own skin? Were they angry with the Chinese for employing this against the innocent? Were they remembering the previous testimony of Sarah, about how the agents put a similar baton into her mouth and private parts? I’m not sure.
However, I was remembering the times I saw this device used against prisoners in my own jail cell so many years ago. The whole room was frozen. Stunned. And I felt something significant was happening for my suffering brothers and sisters.

As soon as I turned off the current, the room erupted again in conversation, but this time the chattering was anxious. All eyes were on me as UN Security surrounded me and grabbed the shock baton off the desk while I continued speaking.