withdrawn an appeal against their prison sentences for printing hundreds of thousands of Bibles and other Christian literature, their friend and former co-worker said Wednesday, November 16.
"According to a reliable governmental source, after [Pastor] Cai’s sentence, one court clerk from [Beijing’s] Haidian District People’s Court went to "visit" [him] at Qinghe Detention Center, indicating [that his] sentence will increase if he decides to make a further appeal," added Bob Fu, who worked with him before fleeing to the United States.
He told BosNewsLife in a statement that only one co-defendant, identified as Ms. Hu Jinyun, decided to launch an appeal at the Beijing Intermediate Court.
The 34-year old pastor, who led at least six house churches, received a three year sentence last week, November 8, from the People’s Court of Haidian on charges of "illegal business practices" for playing a key role in printing and distributing Bibles and publications such as house church magazine Ai Yan or ‘Love Feast’.
Pastor Cai’s wife Xiao Yunfei, 33, was sentenced to two years and her brother Xiao Gaowenone, 37, to one and a half years in prison on the same charges, added Fu, who now runs China Aid Association (CAA), an American, Texas based, religious rights group which has close contacts with house churches.
"NO CRIMES"
Their defense lawyers reportedly argued the Christians were innocent of economic crimes as the Bibles and other Christian publications printed by them were not for sale.
However the pastor "was told the reason he got a three-year sentence [only] because he hired lawyers [who are] annoying the government," said Fu. "Otherwise he could have been released with three-year suspension of his sentence. The heavy pressure made pastor Cai decided not to make further appeal," he added.
"This is blackmailing from the government," Fu stressed. "We [CAA] strongly urge the Chinese higher authority to grant the due process guaranteed by Chinese own laws for every citizen in China."
BUSH VISIT
News of the appeal problems came just shortly before United States President George W.
Bush’s planned November 19-21 visit to China. Bush has made clear he will raise the religious freedom issues with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other government officials during his stay.
On Wednesday, November, 16, he held up Japan and Taiwan as free and open societies, and warned that the people of China had "legitimate" demands for more freedom of speech and religion, news reports said.
In a speech on US-Asia relations in Kyoto, Japan, the first stop on his four-country Asia tour, Bush said: "As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened, even a crack, it cannot be closed." China has strongly denied human rights abuses and says authorities only crackdown on dangerous sects and those violating Chinese laws.
"PARTICULAR CONCERN"
The State Department’s annual report on religious freedom names China as meriting "particular concern." Other countries on that list include, North Korea, Vietnam, and Burma, also known as Myanmar, along with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and Eritrea.
Church watchers say there is a dramatic lack of Bibles in China as the state-run printing plant printed about 40-million Bibles since 1987 and it is unclear how many foreign Bibles there were among them. China has at least 80-million Christians and everyday tens of thousands of new believers are added to that number, Christian advocacy groups say.
Most Christians worship in ‘underground’ house churches. About 17 million worship in the two officially organized churches of China — the Protestant Three Self Patriotic Movement with 12 million members and the Catholic Patriotic Association with 5 million members, according to Christian human rights group Open Doors. (With BosNewsLife News Center and reports from China).
