Pastor sentenced to prison, house arrest

Su Tianfu, a pastor in China’s southern Guizhou province, received a one year prison sentence with two years of reprieve and another six months of house arrest.

His verdict states that he was charged with “intentionally divulging state secrets” for forwarding a prayer letter in a group chat for Huoshi Church, where he served as a pastor, on Dec. 8, 2015.

In truth, Su was exposing government plans for managing Huoshi Church. His lawyers, Zhang Peihong and Xiao Yunyang, concluded that the posted documents bore no relation to state policies, military and national defense, or economics and diplomacy and could not be classified as state secrets. Additionally, Su did not leak any information not already covered by international media.

“They put me under house arrest, but it’s okay,” he said. “I’ve been under house arrest (for this charge) continually for the past two years, so it won’t make much of a difference.”

Su has also been involved in a case in which local authorities fined him and another one of the church’s imprisoned pastors, Yang Hua, more than $1 million USD, claiming that church offerings totaling that amount qualified as “illegal income.” They appealed, maintaining that the money was not illegally taken and was only spent on church expenses, but ultimately lost the case.