Anhui Court Imprisons House Church Pastor for Giving Away Bibles

November 7, 2006

An Anhui court sentenced house church pastor Wang Zaiqing to two years' imprisonment for "illegal operation of a business” in printing and giving away Bibles without government authorization, according to an October 20 report of the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S. NGO that monitors religious freedom in China. Anhui officials detained Wang in April 2006 and formally arrested him in May.

An Anhui court sentenced house church pastor Wang Zaiqing to two years' imprisonment for "illegal operation of a business” in printing and giving away Bibles without government authorization, according to an October 20 report of the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S. NGO that monitors religious freedom in China. Anhui officials detained Wang in April 2006 and formally arrested him in May. On October 9, a local people’s court in Huainan city, Anhui province convicted Wang, sentenced him to two years' imprisonment, and fined him 100,000 yuan (approximately US$12,500). Wang plans to appeal to a higher court.

According to the CAA report and Wang's indictment (via CAA), officials prosecuted Wang under Article 225 of the Criminal Law. This article requires, among other elements, that the accused's actions must have involved operation of "a business" and must have "disrupted market order." The CAA report indicated that the court did not accept defense counsel's argument that Wang's actions did not constitute a violation of Article 225.

In addition to holding house church leaders criminally liable under Article 225 of the Criminal Law, the Chinese government has also established administrative rules that subject an individual to administrative sanctions for printing "materials for religious use." These rules designate national religious associations as responsible for the printing of Bibles for domestic use. The restrictions on religious publishing do not conform to international human rights standards for freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provide that people enjoy the right to use any media to publish "information and ideas," and the ICCPR further provides for the right to publish information and ideas "of all kinds." International human rights standards permit restrictions on publishing only if the restrictions are prescribed by law and necessary to prevent the dissemination of speech that is obscene or defamatory, or that poses a realistic threat to national security, or that is false and threatens public order.

Wang Zaiqing is at least the third Christian religious leader since 2000 to be convicted of "illegal operation of a business" for printing and giving away Bibles and other Christian literature without government authorization. A court convicted Cai Zhuohua, a Beijing house church pastor, in November 2005 for the same offense and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment. Jiang Sunian (also known as Jiang Shurang), an unregistered Catholic priest in Zhejiang province, served four years of a six-year sentence after an April 2000 conviction for illegal publishing of Bibles and hymnals.

CAA has released on its Web site the legal opinion of Li Baiguang. Li is one of Wang's criminal defense attorneys and is himself a house church member. Li actively promotes religious freedom and has served a number of clients in the house church movement. For more information on Wang Zaiqing, see the CECC Political Prisoner Database. For more information on Protestants in China, see the CECC 2006 Annual Report, Section V(d).