The United States, on Sunday, condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s detention of dozens of officials of the Zion Church in China, including prominent pastor Mingri “Ezra” Jin.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the crackdown illustrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches.
The U.S. government asked the CCP to “immediately release the detained church leaders and to allow all people of faith to engage in religious activities without fear of retribution.”
Nearly 30 pastors and staff members of Zion Church were recently picked up in Beijing and five other provinces amid the fear of renewed persecution against Christians in the East Asian nation.
According to the nonprofit ChinaAid, about a dozen security agents broke into Pator Mingri’s apartment in Beihai in southeast Guangxi province on Friday evening.
The officers searched the cleric’s home all night before taking him away in handcuffs. Another pastor was detained at the Shenzhen airport in Guangdong during the coordinated operation.
Zion Church is one of the largest unregistered house churches that defy the Chinese government directive requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.
Born in Heilongjiang, Jin, an ethnic Korean from northeast China, became a Christian while attending the Three-Self Patriotic Movement church after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
The graduate of Beijing University and two seminaries started the Zion Church in 2007. In 2018, the authorities sealed the sanctuary and put Jin under house arrest for refusing to install security cameras.
