NEW YORK (May 19, 2026) — Today, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) submitted an individual complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) on behalf of Pastors Jin “Ezra” Mingri (金明日), Gao Yingjia (高颖佳), and Wang Lin (王林), who are all currently detained in China for exercising their freedom of religion.
Pastor Jin, Pastor Gao, and Pastor Wang of the Zion Church in China, along with almost thirty others in eleven cities, were arrested in October 2025. The pastors are facing fabricated charges of “illegal use of information networks,” along with 15 others who also remain in detention today. These arrests are part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s concerted effort to censor and eliminate religion that does not adhere to its ideals.
Since 2015, Xi Jinping has called for the “sinicization of religion” in order to make religious groups within the country “more Chinese” — a euphemism for strictly aligning religious life with the CCP’s political ideology. The crackdown intensified in 2018, when regime officials replaced hymns with revolutionary party songs and religious symbols with symbols of CCP propaganda. State officials banned Pastor Jin’s church and confiscated the church’s main grounds after he refused to install CCTV cameras. Forcibly driven out of this space, Pastor Jin began to deliver sermons and host “underground” online and hybrid gatherings. His words gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, when his online services were joined by up to 10,000 people at a time.
“These cases are emblematic of the lengths the CCP is willing to go to silence those whom they see as a threat. The pastors were charged under a vague and bogus law that was updated a mere month before their arrests to make it illegal for religious professionals to use the internet and online platforms for their work. The CCP craftily made this addition to target the pastors and their work. Moreover, the CCP has even gone as far as to revoke the licenses of the lawyers defending the pastors — a tactic used by authoritarian regimes worldwide to further limit the opportunities for recourse for those detained,” said HRF Legal & Program Officer Claudia Bennett.
In its WGAD petition, HRF details numerous human rights violations that the pastors have endured throughout their case. All three are held in cells with more than 30 people, and each of them has lost more than 20 pounds due to a lack of food and medical care in detention. Their pre-trial detention has been extended three times, with the extension date now set for June 18, 2026, 252 days after their arrests. Their detention could be extended yet again, with no trial date in sight.
“My father, Pastor Mingri ‘Ezra’ Jin, has been arbitrarily arrested and detained since October 2025, along with 17 fellow church leaders, for nothing more than being a pastor and sharing his faith with his congregation. As a family, we are allowed almost no contact — only brief communications through lawyers, and letters that arrive months after they were written,” said Grace Jin Drexel, the daughter of Pastor Jin. “They are prisoners of conscience, and yet we pray that their conscience remains free, for we know their faith will carry them through. We are deeply grateful to HRF for taking on our cases and supporting our submissions to the WGAD. In the most difficult season our families have ever faced, they have not let us walk alone.”
HRF calls on the WGAD to investigate the cases of Pastors Jin, Gao, and Wang, deem their detention arbitrary and in violation of international law, and request the CCP to immediately and unconditionally release Pastors Jin, Gao, and Wang, as well as the other 15 pastors and church members still detained in China.
Supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.
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