Imprisoned Protestant House Church Leader Up for Parole on March 11, 2006

Cai Zhuohua, a Protestant house church leader, will be eligible for parole on March 11, 2006, after having served half of his three-year prison sentence. On November 8, 2005, the Beijing Haidian District People's Court convicted Cai Zhuohua under Article 225 of China's Criminal Law. According to its November 8 opinion, the court found Cai and his family members guilty of causing disruption by printing and giving away books without a government permit. The court sentenced Cai, Xiao Yunfei, his wife, and Xiao Gaowen, his brother-in-law, to three years, two years, and one and a half years imprisonment, respectively, and fined them 150,000, 120,000, and 100,000 yuan (approximately $20,000, $15,000, and $10,000), respectively.

Public security officials detained Cai on September 11, 2004 and seized 233,776 editions of 51 different religious titles in a Beijing storeroom that Cai used. Officials accused Cai, his wife Xiao Yunfei, her brother Xiao Gaowen, and his wife Hu Jinyun of illegally printing Bibles and other Christian literature without government permission. In an August 2005 report, a religious freedom NGO in Norway noted that Cai's case "highlights the severe restrictions Christian publishing is forced to operate within in China." The Beijing Haidian District People's Procuratorate formally arrested Cai in October 2004 and indicted him in December 2004. His trial was held on July 7, 2005, and he decided not to appeal the conviction, allegedly due to threats by court officials. He is being held at the Qinghe Public Security Bureau Detention Center in the Haidian district of Beijing.

Under Article 81 of China's Criminal Law officials have discretion to grant parole to a prisoner after he has served half of a fixed-term imprisonment sentence. A prisoner has a strong case for parole if he has observed prison regulations, accepted education and reform through labor, showed repentance, and will no longer cause harm to society. Under Article 44 of the Criminal Law, this term is calculated from the date of detention if the prisoner has been held in detention before the court judgment takes effect. As a result, Cai becomes eligible for parole on March 11, 2006 and Xiao Yunfei became eligible for parole on September 27, 2005. Xiao Gaowen's sentence will expire on March 26, 2006. On January 1, Beijing put into effect six prohibitions restraining prison police abuses, as well as "Temporary Provisions on Investigating Responsibility for Mistakes in Law Enforcement by People's Prison Police" (Beijing Provisions). According to a December 15, 2005 Beijing Daily article (via Xinhua, in Chinese), the Beijing Provisions subject Beijing prison police to either warnings or dismissal, depending on the degree of the violation, for intentionally failing to declare a sentence reduction or parole for inmates who meet the criteria.