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China on Monday sentenced a prominent pastor who operated outside the Communist Party–recognized Protestant organization to nine years in prison.
The People’s Intermediate Court in the southwestern city of Chengdu said pastor Wang Yi was also convicted of illegal business operations, was fined, and had his personal assets seized.
Wang had led the Early Rain Covenant Church and was arrested a year ago along with dozens of church leaders as part of an ongoing crackdown on all unauthorized religious groups in the country. The government requires that Protestants worship only in churches recognized and regulated by the party-led Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
Wang’s congregation, one of the most prominent unregistered churches in the country, was shut down during a series of government raids on church gatherings in December 2018. The church released a prepared statement from its pastor after his arrest.
“I firmly believe that Christ has called me to carry out this faithful disobedience through a life of service, under this regime that opposes the gospel and persecutes the church,” he wrote in a widely shared Declaration of Faithful Disobedience. “This is the means by which I preach the gospel, and it is the mystery of the gospel which I preach.”
Wang stated that he denies whatever charges the government has against him, but will serve his time. The 9-year sentence for “inciting to subvert state power” and “illegal business operations” is the longest prison term issued against a house a church pastor in a decade, according to World magazine’s China reporter, June Cheng.
Si Weijiang, a lawyer hired by Wang’s mother, said the charge of illegal business operations stemmed from the printing of books about Christian culture.
“It is actually about the freedom of publication and there has been no social harm," Si said in a phone interview. The charge of incitement “involves preaching and is an issue of speech, which has also inflicted no social harm,” he said.
Even within the narrow confines it has established, China’s officially atheist ruling party has been seeking to rein in religious expression, including removing crosses from official and unofficial churches.
More widely, the party has demolished places of worship, barred Tibetan children from Buddhist religious studies and incarcerated more than a million members of Islamic ethnic minorities in what are termed “re-education centers.”
Early Rain is believed to have had several hundred members who met in different locations around Chengdu, the sprawling capital of Sichuan province. Many of those were taken from their homes overnight in lightning raids, including Wang’s wife, Jiang Rong, who was later released on bail.
Wang had been critical of party head and state President Xi Jinping and made a point of holding a prayer service on June 4 each year to commemorate the 1989 bloody assault on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“This is a pure case of unjust religious persecution against a peaceful preacher of a Chinese reformed church,” said Bob Fu, president of the ministry China Aid. “This grave sentence demonstrates Xi’s regime is determined to be the enemy of universal values and religious freedom. We call upon the international community to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and hold this evil regime accountable.”
CT reported earlier this year that both US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback had rebuked China’s “war on faith,” while the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) bashed the country’s growing religious freedom violations.
Beijing’s hard line on religion has underscored its contrast with other culturally Chinese societies, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, where most follow Buddhism and traditional Chinese beliefs, but where Christianity and other religions also thrive.
At least two members of Early Rain fled to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its own territory.
Wang’s sentencing was condemned by Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon as making a “mockery of China’s supposed religious freedoms."
“Wang Yi was merely practicing his religion and peacefully standing up for human rights in China," Poon said in an emailed statement. “Wang Yi is a prisoner of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally released.”
Additional reporting by CT’s Kate Shellnutt.
