Chinese house church leader sentenced to five years in prison
A court in Guiyang sentenced Zhang Chunlei - an associate of the Guiyang Ren’ai Reformed Church - to five years in prison for "subversion of state power" and "fraud", following a lengthy and dubious procedure.
Elder Zhang was originally detained on the 16th of March 2021 when he attended his local police station to enquire about ten Christians from his church who had been taken away during a police raid.
Chinese officials arrested him on the 1st of May 2021 on suspicion of fraud. Authorities added “inciting subversion of state power” to the charges and the elderly man has remained in custody since. They refused to release him despite of his declining health. He developed cholecystitis in prison and received intravenous support for over 20 days before being diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in August 2023. Despite all this, authorities sent him back to jail.
On the 24th July 2024, Zhang was sentenced to three years and six months in prison on the charge of “inciting subversion of state power” and another two years for alleged fraud. This comes to a five-year prison sentence until the 16th of March 2026, taking into account the time he already spent incarcerated. They also ordered him to pay 14,400 yuan (approximately £1,558 GBP) in relation to the fraud charge, and fined him for another 5,000 yuan (£541 GBP).
According to China Aid the trial had been severely controlled and public access was extremely limited. Many Christians had been banned from attending. Even Zhang’s wife, Yang Aiqing was required to leave her phone outside and was permitted in the courtroom for a short period of time. Yang insisted that her husband had suffered from critical health conditions and should have received proper medical care.
Zhang is going to appeal his sentence.
According to Open Doors UK, President Xi Jinping is trying to crush all Protestant churches and integrate them in the state-sanctioned Three-Self Church by limiting their freedom and forcing them to implement elements of the communist ideology. The Chinese government has increased its surveillance on unregistered house churches.
Source: https://premierchristian.news/
