What happened next, captured by terrified onlookers on their cellphone cameras and later replayed in news reports, would shock the Chinese public and trigger an official crackdown on what Beijing has characterized as a dangerous doomsday “cult.”
“Go to hell, demon,” one of the accused, Zhang Lidong, yelled as he beat the woman with a steel mop handle, telling her she would “never come back in the next reincarnation.”
Other members of the group threatened diners that they would kill anyone who intervened, reported Chinese state media.
By the time police arrived at the fast food outlet in the city of Zhaoyuan, in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, they found the victim, a 37-year-old mother named Wu Shuoyan, lying in a pool of blood.
Zhang was kicking and stomping her while a boy beat her with the mop handle, state media reported; within the hour, she was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Five adults have been convicted of murder over the attack on May 28, 2014 — Zhang Lidong, Zhang Fan, Lyu Yingchun, Zhang Hang, Zhang Qiaolian. They are all members of the Church of Almighty God (“Quannengshen”), Zhaoyuan police said in a statement.
And on Monday, two of them — father and daughter duo Zhang Lidong and Zhang Fan — were executed in east China’s Shandong Province on following the approval of the use of the death penalty by the Supreme People’s Court.
READ: China executes cult members found guilty of McDonald’s murder
After his arrest last year, state television broadcast interview with Zhang Lidong in his cell, in which he confessed to the killing but expressed no remorse.
“She was a demon,” he said, telling the interviewer that he and his co-accused were members of the church. “She was an evil spirit.”
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Elements of the group’s operation seemed like a pyramid scheme, he said.
Unfairly persecuted: Lawyer
But human rights lawyer Teng Biao, who has previously acted as defense lawyer for the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, said the group had a right to its beliefs, and should not be persecuted by the government for subscribing to an unorthodox faith.
“A believer can be jailed for years only because he or she gives materials to other people,” he said.
“It’s okay to punish a criminal, that’s okay. But the problem is that the government not only punishes the criminals, but the whole religious group — even when they didn’t commit any crimes.”
China has a long history of disruptive quasi-Christian movements, said Dunn.
The Taiping Rebellion, a civil war in southern China which claimed over 20 million lives from 1850-1864, was a millenarian movement led by a figure who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus. It is credited with hastening the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Dunn said she believed Beijing’s suppression of unauthorized Christian groups, or “house churches,” had assisted Eastern Lightning’s success, saying it made it more difficult for the faithful “to tell one underground organization talking about a Christ from another.”
CNN’s Zoe Li, Dayu Zhang and Serena Dong contributed to this report.
