Yang Hua
(Photo: China Aid)
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China Aid
Translated by Carolyn Song.
(Guiyang, Guizhou—Nov. 16, 2016) A house church pastor incarcerated in China’s central Guizhou province on a falsified “divulging state secrets” charge wrote a letter to his wife on Nov. 8, updating her on his condition.
Authorities originally took Li Guozhi, who is better known as his alias, Yang Hua, into custody during a raid on his church on Dec. 9 after he interfered with authorities’ attempts to confiscate one of the hard drives. A day later, he was sentenced to two consecutive, five-day administrative detention sentences: one for “the crime of obstructing justice” and the other for “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.” On Dec. 20, the day of his scheduled release, his wife, Wang Hongwu, witnessed him being herded into an unlicensed vehicle blindfolded. Upon inquiry, she learned that Yang’s charge had been changed to “illegally possessing state secrets” and was being transferred to another center to serve a criminal detention sentence.
After a month of no word about her husband, who had disappeared into official custody, Wang received a notice on Jan. 22 announcing her husband’s formal arrest for “divulging state secrets.”
Initially, officials refused to allow Chen Jiangang and Zhao Yonglin, Yang’s lawyers, to meet with requests to meet with their client, and Wang was also kept from seeing her husband. Eventually, however, Chen and Zhao received permission to confer with their client, and Wang was able to correspond with her husband via letter.
China Aid reports on abuses, such as those experienced by Yang and his family, in order to stand in solidarity with persecuted Christians and promote religious freedom in China.