When the U.S. Advocates for Political Prisoners Around the World, Freedom Wins

I n June 1983, President Ronald Reagan secured the release of a group of Russian Pentecostals who had spent five years living in the basement of the American Embassy in Moscow. The group had chosen to seek refuge and live in self-imposed imprisonment rather than renounce their Christian faith. What Reagan achieved was important: The Soviets learned that the persecution of believers was something that the United States took with the utmost seriousness, and which the president of the United States would raise personally.

Few U.S. presidents have managed well the task of securing human-rights victories as part of their broader relations with dictators. It is one thing to negotiate with authoritarian governments as you would any other country and another entirely to negotiate without forgetting the nature of those regimes and the people they have persecuted and imprisoned. But to its credit, the Trump administration has demonstrated that, at least in some cases, American power can still be leveraged to advance human freedom: This year’s release of Pastor Ezra Jin, who came home to his daughter and her family in time for July 4, was a monumental victory.

Pastor Jin founded Zion Church, one of China’s largest underground churches — that is, one of the communities of Christians who refuse to submit to control by the Chinese Communist Party. Last October, he was arrested along with nearly 30 church leaders and members for the offense of holding online worship services.

His daughter, Grace Drexel, became his advocate. She spent months meeting with reporters, members of Congress, administration officials, and anyone else who would listen and who might be able to help. Weeks before Pastor Jin walked free, Grace gave birth to a son. She named him Ezra, after her father, without knowing whether her son would ever meet his grandfather.

Before President Trump’s Beijing summit with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping in May, he committed to raising Jimmy Lai’s case; when the president was asked by journalists whether he would also raise Pastor Jin’s, he said yes. Weeks later, Pastor Jin was reunited with his family in the United States. For a country founded in part as a safe haven for those fleeing religious persecution in Europe, securing the release of a pastor imprisoned for practicing his faith speaks to the ideals on which the nation was founded. It is especially notable that his release came as the United States marked the 250th anniversary of our independence.

Though for Xi, releasing one pastor probably amounted to a low-cost concession — a way to curry favor with Trump without changing anything fundamental about China’s repression of Christians. We should not pretend otherwise.

While President Trump has brought home many American citizens detained abroad, his administration has been somewhat less vocal about political prisoners. That is one reason Pastor Jin’s release deserves more attention than it has received. By raising Pastor Jin’s case — along with that of Jimmy Lai — President Trump has shown a willingness to put individual prisoners on the agenda when meeting with authoritarian leaders, rather than treating them as a mere afterthought.

Nor does the Trump administration’s intervention in Pastor Jin’s case appear to be a one-off. Ambassador Mike Waltz recently used a speech at the United Nations to invoke some of Cuba’s political prisoners by name. White House envoy John Coale’s negotiations with the Lukashenko regime have led to the release of several hundred Belarusian political prisoners. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Venezuela’s interim government should release its remaining political prisoners. Even when such pressure does not lead to the immediate release of political prisoners, the signal itself should be lauded.

The administration seems to have rediscovered an approach to political prisoners that Washington has a habit of forgetting. Reagan carried lists of the wrongly imprisoned into meetings with Soviet leaders and asked after them by name. He understood that dictators notice when the president of the United States remembers someone sitting in a prison cell.

Over time, administrations of both parties drifted toward other priorities. Great power competition became something discussed in terms of trade, military power, technology, and alliances. Individual prisoners became humanitarian concerns — important, perhaps, in the abstract, but somehow separate from the real business of statecraft. We forgot Reagan’s maxim about the power of “the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

With this win, the Trump administration deserves much praise. Now, they have an opportunity to complete the task at hand. Members of Pastor Jin’s church remain in prison, and Beijing is almost certainly betting the pressure will fade now that the most prominent name is home. But the pressure must not fade, especially with Xi scheduled to visit the United States this fall. The administration should continue raising the names of Pastor Jin’s fellow church members and others unjustly detained by the regime, including U.S. citizen U Min Zin and Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who is facing a potential life sentence under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. It should do the same for prisoners in Belarus, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and elsewhere.

Reagan understood that freeing one prisoner was only a part of a negotiation. But as political prisoners face not only their captivity but the fear of being forgotten, convincing authoritarian governments that the president of the United States will keep asking is itself a way to not let their fight for freedom be forgotten.