Dan Hart – WashingtonStand.com
In an extraordinary turn of events, China’s communist regime released imprisoned Pastor Ezra Jin on Friday, marking a reversal in its previous hardline stance in Jin’s case following an appeal from President Trump for the pastor’s release in May.
On July 4, The Free Press reported that Jin had arrived in Los Angeles the day before and was reunited with his family after 266 days in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) prison system. “It was the first time in eight years Jin saw his wife, and the first in six years he saw his daughter,” the outlet noted, as Jin’s family had previously fled the CCP’s persecution and settled in the U.S., while Jin decided to remain in China to continue leading his church.
Jin was arrested and imprisoned by dictator Xi Jinping’s regime last October as part of one of the largest crackdowns on China’s Christian community in decades. Almost two dozen pastors and other workers from Jin’s Zion Church were initially arrested, although some were later released. The house church became a target of the CCP after it gained 10,000 members without being registered with the government. After it’s Beijing church was shut down in 2018, Zion began meeting in over 100 locations across 40 cities and became increasingly influential after it began livestreaming its services during China’s stringent COVID lockdowns.
Following the arrest of Jin and other Zion leaders, global outcry grew for their release as religious freedom advocates highlighted the plight of the imprisoned Christians along with the CCP’s sustained pattern of religious persecution over the last several decades. Jin’s daughter Grace also related the health problems that her father dealt with while in prison, telling “Washington Watch” in October that despite having Type 2 diabetes, the regime “will not allow my father to use the medication that the doctors have prescribed to him. We are very concerned about their sleeping situation. [They were] apparently put in a room with more than 30 others with no beds, and they’re all expected to sleep in a room all together. … They’re not allowing any families to visit.”
A glimmer of hope for Jin appeared during the U.S.-China summit in Beijing in May after President Trump personally advocated for Jin’s release with Xi Jinping and later reported that Xi was giving Jin’s case “very serious consideration.”
But the possibility of Jin’s release appeared to fade weeks later, as news broke that the regime had banned Jin’s lawyer from seeing his client, effectively cutting the pastor off from the outside world. At the same time, the CCP also expanded its clampdown on Christians after it raided and shut down a Sunday worship service being held by the Early Rain Covenant Church on June 14 with between 60 and 70 police officers and other government personnel, detaining 33 worshipers and church leaders.
However, it appears that the Trump administration’s efforts to advocate for the imprisoned pastor were not in vain, as ChinaAid reported that “Chinese officials reportedly informed [Jin] that his release resulted from discussions between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and was presented as a goodwill gesture coinciding with America’s Independence Day.”