Daughter of jailed Chinese church leader, pastors share sorrow and resilience amid Beijing’s ongoing suppression of faith.
No letters, no phone calls, no in-person visits.
The past two and a half months have been difficult for the Jin family, ever since Chinese authorities jailed Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, after raiding one of China’s largest underground churches, which he leads.
On Christmas Eve, Grace Jin Drexel’s eyes reddened as she read a public letter to her detained father, hoping the message could somehow get to him and bring him comfort from the United States.
The pastor, who founded Zion Church in Beijing in 2007, wound up in a cell with more than 30 people, sleeping on mats spread on the floor, Jin Drexel said.
She described a cell with no glass panels where wind and rain flow in during the harsh winter season. When her grandmother tried to send in clothes, blankets, and his medication, guards turned her away, Jin Drexel said.
“It is extremely sad to think that my dad would not be able to celebrate Christmas with us—and probably not even celebrate at all,” Jin Drexel, a U.S. citizen, told The Epoch Times. “He’ll be in the detention center, still having to memorize the Xi Jinping Thought.”
‘Fear of Independent Faith’
This Christmas looks especially bleak for China’s Christians, who have seen intensifying persecution over the past year.
Jin Drezel’s father is one of 18 Zion Church members who remain in detention after the Chinese regime’s sweeping clampdown in October, which spanned seven provinces and municipalities. But roundups have continued since then.
During a Thanksgiving dinner, Beijing police burst into a guesthouse and took more than 10 Christians to the police station for questioning, according to a notice from the Zion Church.
In mid-December, more than 1,000 police swarmed to a small town called Yayang in eastern China’s Zhejiang province to target a local church, interrogating hundreds and issuing wanted notices against two church leaders, human rights group China Aid said. Months before that, members from Golden Lampstand Church in northern China received years-long sentences, with the longest reaching 15 years, according to China Aid.
“Christians in China today are facing the worst persecution since the end of the Cultural Revolution,” the organization’s founder, Bob Fu, told The Epoch Times. “A nuclear-powered regime like China would start rounding up Christians and other peaceful, independent faith believers—I think that shows their fear of independent faith. They just want to launch a war against God.”
China Aid documented that fireworks of unusual scale lit up the local government square amid the Yayang operation. It was a disturbing sign, Fu said, as there was no traditional festival nor other official reason calling for the celebration.
“What kind of morally bankrupt regime would do this by celebrating the arrest and cracking down of peaceful, harmless Christians on the eve of Christmas?” he said.
By Eva Fu
