2014-07-21
From left: China Aid president Bob Fu; Fu’s wife, Heidi; Zhang ‘Yunyun’ Huixin; Sun ‘Jesse’ Jiexi; and Zhang’s husband, Sun Zhulei in Midland, Texas, July 15, 2014.
Photo courtesy of China Aid
The daughter of jailed Chinese Protestant pastor Zhang Shaojie has arrived in the United States to raise awareness of government persecution of her father’s church, according to a rights group.
Zhang Huixin, also known as Zhang Yunyun, arrived in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday along with her husband and one-year-old daughter, the U.S.-based Christian rights group ChinaAid said in a statement on its website.
The three were helped to leave China via Southeast Asia by an underground network of activists, the statement said.
“Our family has come here to raise awareness of the deteriorating situation of religious freedom in Nanle County, Henan, and in China,” Zhang Yunyun told ChinaAid.
Zhang Shaojie was sentenced this month to 12 years’ imprisonment by a court in Nanle county, in the central province of Henan on charges of “fraud” and “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.”
Zhang, a former president of the government-sanctioned Protestant association and adviser to the county People’s Political Consultative Conference, was also ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 yuan (U.S. $16,000).
According to ChinaAid, Zhang Yunyun was “thrown out” of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after she tried to submit a visa application there in April.
However, the U.S. government granted the family advance parole authorization following Zhang Shaojie’s sentence.
The family’s daring escape came after they tried to fly straight to the U.S. from Beijing on June 23, but were turned back by Chinese state security police, who said they were a risk to national security, ChinaAid said.
Zhang Yunyun said she hadn’t come to the U.S. to escape persecution, however.
ChinaAid said local police had already begun a campaign of harassment against the family, which they stepped up after the sentence was announced, confiscated Zhang Yunyun’s car and threatening her elderly grandparents.
‘Underground railroad’
ChinaAid president and founder Bob Fu said the family’s escape made use of an “underground railroad” in Southeast Asia.
“Many anonymous heroes helped them along the way,” Fu said Wednesday, after the family landed in Midland, Texas, where they will be supported by a Baptist church group.
