Co-defendant evangelist Wang Honglan has not been sentenced yet but remains in custody.
by Fang Yongrui
In March, “Bitter Winter” reported about the arrest and prosecution of ten Christian believers from Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. They were accused of illegal sales of Bibles, but the peculiarity of the case was that the Bibles had been legally published in Nanjing with the government’s authorization. The prosecutor’s argument was that sales of Bibles by an illegal house church not affiliated with the government-controlled Three-Self Church is a crime even if the Bibles are in themselves “legal.”
The ten Christians were Wang Honglan, Ji Heying, Zhang Wang, Wang Jiale, Liu Minna, Li Chao, Yang Zhijun, Ji Guolong, Liu Wei, and Ban Yanhong. Wang Honglan is well-known in the Hohhot Christian community, and had already spent five years in jail and one year in a labor camp. Ji Heying is her husband. Ban Yanhong was regarded by the authorities as another key figure in the group.
They were all arrested in April 2021, and a legal battle followed. The Christians claimed that not only they did not make a profit, they actually lost money since they purchased the Bibles from a Three-Self organization in Nanjing at 95% of the cover price. They then sold them at 75% of the cover price. Their purposes were clearly evangelistic rather than commercial.
Nonetheless, on April 15, 2024, the Hohhot Huimin District Court sentenced Ban Yanhong to five years in jail for “illegal business operations.” The trial continues with respect to the other defendants but the court decided that Wang Honglan, Wang Jiale, Liu Minna, and Yang Zhijun should remain in jail. Li Chao, Ji Heying, Ji Guolong, Liu Wei, and Zhang Wang, have been released on bail but should still face trial.