1999 - Yan Weiping

May 13, 1999

Yan Weiping

Beijing

Yan Weiping, a 33-year-old underground Catholic priest from Hebei Province and the Vicar General of Yixian Diocese, came from a family of many Catholic priests and nuns. Yan was secretly ordained a priest of the underground Catholic Church on November 20, 1988, and was arrested a year later and imprisoned for six months because of his unwillingness to join the Catholic Patriotic Association.

The Communist government has long been angered by unregistered Catholics in China, not only because they refuse to submit to Beijing’s wishes, but also because the Vatican recognizes them. This is seen by China as tantamount to interference in the nation’s internal affairs by a foreign state. Just prior to Yan’s murder, tensions between the Vatican and Beijing were high. At about the same time an underground Catholic seminary student from Hebei Province, Wang Qing, was “beaten, hung by his hands for three days and force-fed a filthy liquid that caused gastro-intestinal illness.”[I]

While Yan was leading a meeting in a private home in Beijing on May 13, 1999, security officers stormed in and the priest was dragged away in front of the shocked worshippers. The believers had their names recorded, were questioned, and sternly threatened by the police before being allowed to return to their homes. Later that evening the battered and bruised corpse of Yan Weiping was found dumped on a city street. Believers rushed to the scene as soon as news reached them, and said it appeared as if Yan had been badly tortured and then his body thrown from a great height. Locals soon found that Yan had been thrown from a fifth-story window. Health officials arrived and took the body away, cremating it before an autopsy could be conducted.

On previous occasions when they have murdered Christians the Chinese authorities have claimed the prisoner died from self-inflicted actions, but in the case of Yan they remained completely silent, refusing to answer any enquiries into his case.