Chinese authorities have released a pastor who was reportedly tortured in detention and accused of endangering national security, more than four years after opening a case against him and two co-defendants over their unregistered church. The pastor, Lian Xuliang, went back to his house earlier this month, ChinaAid reported, citing Weiquanwang, a rights group. Lian leads the Xi’an Church of Abundance, an unregistered congregation in the Shaanxi provincial capital.
The case, and what comes next for the two co-defendants, preacher Fu Juan and Lian’s father, Pastor Lian Changnian, remained unclear after his release. Police arrested Lian Xuliang and two other church members on Aug. 17, 2022, and accused all three of fraud and “endangering national security,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which says Lian was tortured while held afterward.
The Xi’an Municipal Public Security Bureau placed the three under a measure Chinese law calls “residential surveillance at a designated location,” a form of secret detention at a site chosen by the government, on suspicion of fraud. The three were held separately in small rooms at a converted hotel for six months, with no word to their families the whole time, according to the rights group Church in Chains.
They suffered starvation, beatings, drugging and long denial of bathroom access, the group said. A church prayer letter dated April 29, 2024, said he endured severe abuse in custody. Two days after the August 2022 arrests, Xi’an’s civil affairs agency banned the church as an illegal social organization for operating without registration. On Feb.
15, 2023, the three were moved into criminal detention and transferred to another Xi’an facility, and prosecutors won approval a month later to formally arrest them.