18 months of detention, BosNewsLife learned Thursday July 1. The Christian news agency Compass said thousands of Christians and dissidents are detained across China, rights groups say Guoxing from Shanghai has been re-united with his wife and daughter after he was released June 7 from a labor camp in Jiangsu province, where he served time "for setting up unregistered house churches in East China."
This was Xu’s fourth arrest and imprisonment, and Compass said it "has taken its toll on his health: while "his wife, daughter and elderly mother have also suffered."
Xu, who was born into a Christian family in 1955, studied English in Los Angeles and soon returned to China to spread the gospel which he saw as a calling from God, Compass said. He reportedly refused to join the government-controlled church in China and the state church falsely reported him to the police for being a “counter-revolutionary spy.”
In March 1980, Xu was arrested and jailed for three months and police told him to stop smiling as they had never seen a prisoner so happy before, said Compass, which has close contacts in the region. In November 1989, Xu was arrested a second time and sentenced to three years “re-education through labor” at the Dafeng hard labor camp in Jiangsu province.
OFTEN BEATEN
"He was often beaten, but shared the gospel with his fellow inmates. Seventy prisoners there reportedly became Christians," Compass said Released in 1992, Xu married in 1994 and his wife gave birth to their daughter in 1995.
In 1997, police monitored his house church in suburban Shanghai and recorded all religious activities. In July of that year, he was arrested again and incarcerated for an additional three years. Xu’s case drew widespread international attention. The U.S. Department of State highlighted his unjust imprisonment in their reports on human rights abuse in China for 1998 and 1999, and Xu’s family was prevented from approaching President Clinton during his visit to China in 1999, Compass recalled.
Xu he refused to leave China, saying that God has called him to stay to evangelize and build up the church. More than 100 evangelical church leaders are known to have been arrested in recent weeks amid reports that Communist authorities are fearing to lose control over the house churches, which analysts say they see as a threat to their Atheistic ideology and Communism in general. Thousands of Christians and dissidents are believed to be detained across China, human rights groups say.
