US will ‘continue to push’ for release of detainees in China, State Department says

WASHINGTON — On Monday, after the U.S. State Department announced the release of David Lin, an American pastor, from nearly two decades of imprisonment in China, officials said more work remains to secure the freedom of other Americans held in China. 


U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that the U.S. government had been working to secure Lin's release for some time. 


“When it comes to David Lin, we are glad to see he is released. We welcome it. We’ll continue to push the release of other Americans,” Miller said during a regular press briefing.


Lin, 68, was detained in 2006 after entering China. He was later convicted of contract fraud and given a life sentence in 2009. After Chinese courts reduced his sentence, he was set to be released from Beijing in 2029.


Bob Fu, a pastor and founder of ChinaAid, a nonprofit dedicated to religious freedom in China, called the original charges against Lin a “scam” and said they were facilitated by the Chinese government as a gambit to unjustly take hostages.


The imprisonment and now release of Lin, Fu told VOA, is especially significant as China is increasingly cracking down on religious practices within the country, with human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet and growing governmental restrictions on Christian traditions. 


Despite this, Fu said that the success of Lin’s release could be attributed to two factors: the souring of the global public opinion on China and the hard work of U.S. officials.


“This shows that if our top political leaders really take this seriously and persistently, it will bear fruits for our citizens' freedom,” he said.


According to the Dui Hua Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to freeing detainees through dialogue with China, over 200 American nationals in China under coercive measures, including wrongful detentions and exit bans.


The State Department has listed two other detained individuals as priority cases: Businessman Kai Li, accused of espionage in 2016, and Mark Swidan, convicted of drug trafficking in 2019.


“We’ll continue to push the release of other Americans,” Miller said. “It’s something that we have been working on for some time.”


Miller declined to say if Lin's release had been the result of a swap, according to a report by Reuters.


China's embassy in Washington declined to comment when asked if Beijing had received anything from the U.S. in return for Lin's release, according to Reuters. The embassy also told Reuters that Chinese authorities handle criminal suspects in accordance with the law and "treat them equally regardless of their nationality."


Later this week, a U.S. congressional hearing is set to be held on Americans who have been arbitrarily imprisoned in China.


Some material for this report came from Reuters.