Justice denied

China | An unusual coalition of supporters couldn't rescue pastor and businessman Cai Zhuohua | Priya Abraham

Even with his case under the international eye, Cai Zhuohua's lawyers did not cherish much hope of winning their client an acquittal. They were right.

On Nov. 8, more than a year after his arrest, a Chinese court handed the Beijing house-church pastor a three-year sentence for "illegal business practices." That is, it convicted him of selling hundreds of thousands of Bibles and religious tracts he printed without a government permit. Mr. Cai began serving his sentence at a criminal prison after a year at Haidian Detention Center in Beijing.

The conviction, however, has little to do with business and everything to do with religious persecution. When authorities arrested him in September last year, they found 200,000 Bibles and copies of other Christian literature in a warehouse used by the pastor (see "Evil teachings," WORLD, Dec. 4, 2004). The 35-year-old Cai was not selling them, but giving them away. Despite having difficulty proving he intended to sell the material—even delaying the trial twice—prosecutors won his conviction.