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Chinese minister of unofficial church sentenced to more than 7 years in prison
A prominent Chinese minister of an unofficial Protestant church has been jailed for seven and a half years, a U.S.-based Christian group said Sunday, a hefty punishment indicating the continued government crackdown on unsanctioned religious activity.
Zhang Rongliang was sentenced Tuesday in a court in Zhongmou county in Henan province after being held since December 2004, accused of obtaining a passport under false pretenses and illegally crossing the border, the China Aid Association said in an e-mailed news release.
According to the charges against him, Zhang traveled to the United States, Australia, Egypt and Singapore for world mission conferences on a passport obtained through fraudulent means, the group said.
A man who answered the telephone at the court on Sunday said he had no access to records because it was the weekend.
China’s communist government allows worship only in state-supervised churches, which claim about 11 million members.
Worshippers and clergy in unofficial churches are regularly harassed and detained.
Activists say unregistered ”house churches” — where worship takes place in people’s homes — such as Zhang’s have as many as 100 million members nationwide.
Over the years, Zhang, 55, has set up one of the largest networks of Protestant churches operating outside state control, surreptitiously preaching in villages and fields of central China since the 1970s.
China Aid has said Zhang’s two congregations — the Fangcheng Mother Church and China for Christ Church — are among the country’s largest underground church networks, with an estimated 10 million members.
Zhang has spent nearly 12 years in prison and labor camps, where he also evangelized fellow prisoners. He has been hospitalized for diabetes and high blood pressure.
In 2004, police searched Zhang’s apartment and confiscated digital video discs, publicity materials and photographs revealing contacts between Zhang’s church and those overseas.
Contacts with foreign evangelical groups are considered especially sensitive because communist leaders regard them as possible channels for foreign subversion.
After his arrest, Zhang was shuttled between detention centers as officials looked for a court to convict him. His lawyer has said that when one court was ready to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence, Zhang’s case was transferred to another city — raising questions about whether authorities are disregarding Chinese laws in their efforts to obtain a conviction.
”We are deeply disappointed for this extraordinary harsh verdict,” said Bob Fu, president of Midland, Texas-based China Aid said in the statement. ”This is yet another case showing the Chinesegovernment’s new tactic of religious persecution in the name of criminal charges.”
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