A prominent activist belonging to the underground Protestant church in China has been released from a labour camp after serving a two-year sentence, according to China Aid Association.
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The Texas-based CAA said that Zhang Yinan, 47 left a camp near the central China city of Zhengzhou on Sunday.

According to CAA President Bob Fu, the international interest stirred up by Yinan’s case led to him being given a lighter sentence, with some underground church organisers receiving terms of several years in prison or camps.

According to the Associated Press, Mr Fu said: “We urge the Chinese government to release all the prisoners of conscience like Mr. Zhang.”

The CAA also stated that Mr Zhang had his identification card, which is needed to check into hotels and board planes, removed by police on his release from the camp, in order to limit his chance to travel.

Zhang, a church historian and writer, was sentenced in 2003 without trial to two years’ ‘re-education through labour’ for ‘subverting the Chinese government and socialist order’.

According to the Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the Re-education through Labour Commission used private entries in Zhang’s personal prayer journal as evidence against him.

China, an officially atheist country, limits the people’s freedom to worship to tightly controlled state churches. This has not, however, stopped an estimated 50 million from gathering in underground churches, a far higher number than the official 10 million who worship at the official Protestant church, the “Three-Self Patriotic Movement”.