Sawt Falasteen - Daughter of 'underground' pastor urges China for his release

She recalls being consumed by franticness: "I was texting literally everyone in my contacts, like, 'what do I do?'"

Her father is Jin Mingri, who founded the unregistered Zion Church in 2007 in Beijing. It grew to 1,500 members before shuttering in 2018 under pressure from Chinese authorities.

But the church maintained an online presence that flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic, amassing a following across 40 Chinese cities.

On October 10, Jin -- who also goes by Ezra -- was detained on "suspicion of the illegal use of information networks." Around this time, authorities also rounded up several pastors and church members in cities like Beijing.

"None of the family members have been able to meet those detained," Jin Drexel told AFP in Washington, where she works.

She and her brothers are American citizens, and she now devotes much of her time advocating for the detainees' release.

But the 37-day window in which authorities may detain someone before making formal arrests is narrowing.

"We call on the Chinese government to also look into this case and realize that potentially, this was a mistake," she said.

Most of the pastors have secured legal representation, and her father has met his lawyers at least twice.

Still, Jin Drexel frets: "We want to see him. We're really concerned about his medication and his health."

"He has pretty severe Type 2 diabetes, and the detention center initially didn't even give him any medication," she added.

She teared up recounting her father's condition, describing how he remained "an optimist" in a recent letter.

"He was just telling his family members to not worry about him and that he is feeling comforted to be able to suffer with Christ."

- Basic dignity -

"It's not that we were against the government. We just wanted to have our own decision-making power for simple things like, how many people can attend?"

She moved to the United States for studies shortly after, and regularly visited her family in China.

But things changed in 2018, a few years after President Xi Jinping assumed top office.

Officials tightened oversight on religious and other groupings, calling for the "Sinicization" of religious practice.

China's officially atheist government has been wary of organized movements outside its control, and the country's Christians had been split among those attending unofficial "house" or "underground" churches and those visiting government-sanctioned places of worship.

Around September 2018, authorities shuttered Zion Church and froze its assets, Jin Drexel said, months after its leadership resisted installing facial recognition cameras.

Her family relocated abroad but her father returned to China to be with the church -- and has since faced a travel ban.

He has not seen most of his family, including two young sons, for seven years, she said.

She last saw Jin in 2020, after a visit that extended to 11 months as authorities, too, restricted her movements.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has criticized the crackdown, and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced a resolution condemning the CCP for the detentions.

Growing up Christian in China, Jin Drexel has wondered how she would act if she is detained one day.

But when it happened to her father, the weight of facing the power of China's government hit her: "I have no idea what I'm supposed to do."

"This is a religious freedom issue," she said. "It is about basic human dignity, and that the Chinese government wants to control everything about everyone, including what is so intimate -- like your own beliefs."

M.AlAhmad--SF-PST