Jailed pastor of persecuted house church in China may stand trial soon, says lawyer

Lawyers of Pastor Yang Hua of Houshi Church believe their client might soon stand trial after China convicted four detainees, including two house church leaders, in unannounced trials.

The pastor's lawyers came to this conclusion after one of them, Zhao Yonglin, visited on Aug. 5 and discovered that the court already received a videotape submitted by the Nanming District Procuratorate as evidence in the case.

"Attorney Zhao visited Yang Hua yesterday," China Aid quoted the pastor's wife, Wang Hongwu, as saying. "He said he had reviewed all of the case files and the case is likely to be tried in August."

Authorities arrested Yang, whose real name is Li Guozhi, in December last year after refusing to surrender a church-owned hard drive that the state wanted to confiscate. The state charged Yang of subversion as well as "divulging state secrets." Authorities also arrested four other members of Yang's persecuted house church, the largest in Guiyang province.

"He said that Yang Hua was doing well and told us not to worry about him. [Yang] is concerned that we get too worried about his wellbeing. He would feel more at peace if we're not too worried for him," added Wang.

The jailed pastor previously wrote to her wife letters to reassure her that "God never makes a mistake" and that God gave him "a good place to rest" even while he faced false accusations and extorted to confess.

Zhao and his co-counsel Chen Jiangang filed a lawsuit against Yang's prosecutors after the pastor attested in a sworn testimony how the prosecutors breached the bounds of the law in handling his case and even manipulated a videotaped interrogation.

The Communist State drew criticisms from the U.S. and human rights advocates after it sentenced in highly suspect trials two house church leaders and two human rights activists rounded up from last year's political crackdown.

Mark Turner, the spokesman for the U.S. state department, blasted the charges against the convicted detainees as "vague and apparently politically motivated" while U.S. Representative Christopher Smith diminished the court proceedings as "charade of forced 'confessions' and show trials."

"China cannot continue to benefit from the international rules-based system, while making a mockery of the rule of law at home," said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Smith's co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC).