In Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, China, the police arrested ten Christians on charges of illegal distribution of Bibles. After their arrest on April 21, they remained in detention, and their trials are ongoing.

The court has already sentenced Ban Yanhong to five years in prison. One of the Christians, Wang Honglan, had already served five years in jail and one year in work camp. The trial of the other defendants is still ongoing. Some of them were released on bail; others remain in detention.

The story’s irony is that the Bibles they distributed were published with the government’s approval in Nanjing. The Hohhot Christians bought them from a government-controlled Three-Self organization and sold them for a lower price. This also supports their claim that their intent was not monetary gain but evangelism.

The house church of the arrested Christians is not part of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Three-Self Church. This case is another example of the Chinese authorities trying to eliminate or merge independent house churches into the Three-Self Church.

Source: Bitter Winter