The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says its new letter writing campaign has played an important role in helping Christian prisoners to recover their freedom.
PrisonerAlert.com, a website set up by the international Christian persecution watchdog group, allows people all around the world to write to imprisoned Christians, giving them words of encouragement with various selected phrases and Scripture verses.In addition, people are able to contact the government officials of the prisoners' respective country by the email address provided on the website.
In the most recent demonstration of its influence, Chinese house church activist Zhang Yinan was released last month after spending two years in a labour camp. The story of the labour camp detainee was featured on PrisonerAlert.com.
"About 2,700 people went on the website, looked at Brother Zhang's profile, and then composed a letter to him," said VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton in a report, according to Agape Press. "The website also translates the letters into the language of the prisoner, so his letters were in Chinese."
VOM believes the strong response of fellow Christians who participated in a letter writing campaign on Zhang's behalf played a significant role in his release, according to Nettleton.
As reported by Agape Press, Nettleton stated that VOM was not able to confirm whether these letters had actually got to Zhang, as prisoners usually are not allowed to contact outsiders. Nevertheless, he believed that even if these letters just simply got to the prison, the authorities would know that "this was a man who the world knew about and [that people] were watching how he was treated."
The letters definitely influenced the Chinese government to some extent, said Nettleton, and helped to secure the house church leader's release. Similar campaigns have helped win the release and even to save the lives of other Christian prisoners, the VOM spokesman added.
Zhang was one of several Christian prisoners featured in VOM’s Prisoner Alert website. Currently, PrisonerAlert.com features the profiles of around 16 other Christian prisoners from China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and North Korea and others. Other than Zhang, Vietnamese Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang from Vietnam Mennonite Church and Vietnamese evangelist Than Van Truong were also released earlier this year.
