Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, leader of the prominent underground Zion Church who was detained in China in October, has been released, less than two months after US president Donald Trump raised his case with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a visit to Beijing, according to rights advocates.
Mr Jin arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday and “is finally reunited with his family”, Frances Hui of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation wrote on X.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of Western lawmakers, also confirmed his release and shared a photograph of the pastor smiling alongside his daughter, Grace Jin Drexel.
The pastor’s case drew international attention after Mr Trump said, at the end of his state visit to Beijing in May, that he had personally asked Mr Xi to consider releasing Mr Jin. Mr Trump said Mr Xi had responded that he would give the request serious consideration.
In a statement, Mr Jin’s family said the release came “very suddenly”, They thanked Mr Trump for his efforts and said they believed the pastor’s freedom “could not have happened without Xi’s direct intervention”.
“We hope this is a signal of a positive turn for people of faith in China and relations between our two nations,” the statement said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr Jin was detained with 17 other church leaders in October in one of China‘s largest crackdowns on a single church in decades, raising worries over Beijing‘s escalation in curtailing religious freedom.
The Zion Church is among the largest churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities, defying restrictions from the officially atheist Communist Party requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.
“My father started Zion in order to worship freely in a church that put God as the sole head of our church, like many faithful Christians everywhere,” his daughter Grace Jin Drexel, who lives in the United States, told a congressional committee in November.
Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
