On 15 February Zhang Xiuhong, the former deacon of Living Stone Church, Guizhou province, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Zhang was first arrested in July 2015 and was held in detention for a year and a half before standing trial on 23 January 2017. In late July 2015, Zhang Xiuhong, the presiding deacon of Living Stone Church, was stopped and hauled from her car as she was driving near the church building. One of the assailants climbed into her car and drove away.
Zhang’s house was later raided, her computers, USB drives and hard drives confiscated and her husband taken into custody, leaving his 80-year-old mother and three-year-old adopted daughter alone in the house. The next day her husband was released, and Zhang was subsequently charged with ‘illegal business operations’. However, her interrogators’ questions mainly focused on the church, its pastors and other core members, rather than on her business activities.
