Pastor Xing Wenxiang of Holy Love Christian Church in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, has been released from prison after a two-year reduction in her twelve-year sentence. China Aid reported, “These ten years in prison inflicted significant physical and mental trauma on her.”
During Xing Wenxiang’s imprisonment her mother died and she was not allowed to attend the funeral. The first thing she did after her release was to visit her mother’s grave.
In 2016 Xing Wenxiang was sentenced to twelve years in prison on four charges including embezzlement, disturbing social order, illegal business operations and concealing accounting documents. Her husband Bao Guohua, who was senior pastor of the officially-recognised “Three-Self” church, was given a fourteen-year sentence and remains in prison.
They were targeted by the authorities when they resisted the campaign to remove church crosses in Zhejiang province in 2015. Their newly-built “Sheng’ai Church” in Jinhua had all the necessary permits and was legal and compliant, but when the Zhejiang provincial government ordered the removal of crosses the church refused to cooperate with the Jinhua Municipal Religious Affairs Bureau’s forced removal of the cross on the roof, insisting that the church was a legal building. Subsequently, the church also refused to cooperate with the Jinhua Municipal Religious Affairs Bureau’s financial inspection of religious venues.
In July 2015 Pastor Xing Wenxiang, Pastor Bao Guohua and ten other church workers were arrested by local police and criminally detained. Charges against them included “embezzling believers’ offerings in the name of religion and illegally operating the church“.
On 25 February 2016 The Wucheng District Court of Jinhua City sentenced Pastor Xing Wenxiang to twelve years in prison with a fine and confiscation of property, and sentenced Pastor Bao Guohua to 14 years in prison. Ten other church workers including administrators received suspended sentences.
After the two pastors were detained the church’s lawyer Chen Jiangang told the BBC he believed they were being punished for protesting against the removal of their church cross and that their arrest was an act of retaliation by authorities. He said that in June 2015 a local religious affairs official told the church to take down its cross and the church refused. “I can tell you that if church leaders had agreed to take down the cross, there would have been no problem,” he said. “But they refused. That’s why they were detained. What is unusual is that this was an official church, recognised by the Communist Party. Everything had been properly approved by the authorities.“
(China Aid, BBC)