Chinese authorities formally arrested 18 leaders of a large underground church, paving the way for their prosecution and possible prison sentences of up to three years.
Nearly 30 Zion Church pastors and staff were arrested by police in mid-October in the largest crackdown on Chinese Christians in seven years, according to Reuters, which reported the arrests on Wednesday citing an advocate for a Christian NGO.
This is according to ChinaAid, a Christian non-profit human rights organization in a statement that the leaders were arrested on ‘politically motivated charges’.
“These pastors and colleagues are being treated as criminals simply because they faithfully led a large, legally unregistered church that refused to submit to CCP control and supervision,” the statement said in part.
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Christians attend a house church service at Zion Church in Beijing, China on April 6, 2008. (Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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Dr. Bob Fu, the organization’s founder and chairman, called the arrests of the pastors and staffers a “chilling milestone in the CCP’s all-out war against Christianity in China.”
“Their only ‘crime’ is preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, shepherding God’s flock and refusing to make the Church of Christ a propaganda tool of the Communist Party,” he added. “By turning preachers into political prisoners, the CCP is not only persecuting these individuals and their families – it is also sending a warning to every independent church in China: submit to the Party’s control or face destruction.”
Jin Mingri, lead pastor of Zion Church, poses in Beijing on September 12, 2018, days after officials closed one of China’s largest underground Protestant churches. (Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images)
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced the arrests of Zion Church members in October and asked the Chinese government to release them.
Open Doors, an international organization that supports persecuted believers, estimates that there are more than 96 million Christians in China.
