WASHINGTON — A California Christian pastor has been released from China after nearly 20 years behind bars and is back in the US. Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday.
David Lin, 68, was arrested after entering China In 2006, he was later convicted of contract fraud and sentenced to life in prison, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and advocacy groups.
“We are pleased to announce the release of David Lin from prison in the People’s Republic of China. He has returned to the United States and is seeing his family for the first time in nearly 20 years,” the State Department said.
“Praise God! We got a call late last night!!! Daddy is free and done with Alaska now,” Alice Lin, the pastor’s daughter, texted Bob Fu, a longtime supporter, on Sunday before she was to reunite with her father, according to the screenshot Fu shared with the AP.
“God did it!!!” the daughter texted.
The administration has been working on Lin and the others’ case for years, raising these issues at every meeting with senior Chinese officials, including Blinken’s recent meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos.
Lin traveled to China regularly in the 1990s to spread the gospel, according to China Aid, a U.S.-based advocacy group founded by Fu for persecuted activists in China. The group said Lin had applied for a permit from the Chinese government to conduct Christian ministry. It is unlikely he received permission, and he was arrested in 2006 while helping a house church, China Aid said.
Lin was formally arrested in 2009 on suspicion of contract fraud and sentenced to life imprisonment after a judicial review, China Aid said.
The charge is often used against leaders of the house church movement, which operates outside state-sponsored faith groups, and is a crime Lin has denied, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a humanitarian group that advocates for prisoners in China. The religious freedom commission says that “those who participate in and lead house churches often face intimidation, harassment, arrest and severe punishment.”
In China, all Christian churches must pledge allegiance to the ruling Communist Party and register with the government. Any unregistered church is considered an underground church and its activities are considered illegal in China. Beijing has always cracked about ‘unlawful preaching’, and efforts have only intensified over the past decade.
Lin’s sentence was reduced and he was set to be released in April 2030. The Religious Freedom Commission noted in 2019 that there were reports that Lin was in poor health and that his safety in prison could be at risk.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Lin’s release.
Other Americans known to still be held in China include Kai Li, a businessman being held on espionage charges his family says are false, and Mark Swidanwho was convicted on drug charges. Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt are also serving time on drug-related charges, and both are considered “unlawfully imprisoned” by the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. human rights organization that focuses on political prisoners and other at-risk groups, which it says it is considering.
Dui Hua estimates that there are more than 200 Americans living under coercive measures in China.
Republican Michael McCaulThe Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee said he was “extremely pleased” that Lin was released after 17 years behind bars in China and called for the immediate release of Li and Swidan.
Lin’s capture, like that of so many others, marks a rising trend of hostage diplomacy by authoritarians around the world, McCaul said. said on the social platform X.
___
Associated Press writers Courtney Bonnell and Matt Lee contributed from Washington.