China frees David Lin, an American pastor who the US government says was wrongfully detained for 18 years

The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in China usually sees families get together and give thanks, much like Thanksgiving in America. This year, Chinese-American pastor David Lin is to be thanked as the holiday is marked on Tuesday. In a surprise move, Beijing freed the 68-year-old on Sunday after nearly 20 years in prison in a case the US government and his family had dismissed as unfounded.

Lin entered China in 2006 and tried to establish a Christian training center in Beijing. ChinaThe Communist Party disapproves of these activities and routinely destroys Christian churches underground, as they consider them a threat to their power. Only officially supervised churches are allowed under Communist Party rule.

Lin was arrested the same year he arrived, then in 2009 he was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of fraud. Such accusations are often leveled against house church leaders who are trying to raise money for expansion, according to the human rights group Dui Hua Foundation.

The US State Department, which has always guarded Lin wrongly detained by Chinaconfirmed release there. The Chinese government did not publicly comment on Lin’s release over the long holiday weekend.

Campaign group Bring Our Families Home posted a message attributed to Lin’s daughter Alice on social media in April, in which she was quoted as saying she had been diagnosed with cancer and “we don’t know how much time she has left,” given her father’s age, adding : “We can’t wait.”

“This has been going on for a long time. Many people have been working on this for many years, different administrations,” John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, told CBS News.

The group has helped push for Lin’s release, sending more than 30 inquiries to Beijing since China arrested the Californian. “We have members of Congress out there. You have (California) Governor Newsom brought up with the Chinese government. But you know, actually, I think the person who gets the most credit is David Lin’s daughter.

While Lin was in custody, he missed his daughter Alice’s wedding and the birth of his grandson. In April, he wrote a letter, published by the Wall Street Journal, saying that he dreamed of his father “meeting my wife and my 8-year-old son for the first time.”

“There are no words to express the joy we have,” Alice told Politico on Sunday. “We have plenty of time to make up.”

Lin’s release comes nearly three weeks after a visit to Beijing by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in late August, when he met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“I started getting indications two or three weeks ago that this could happen,” Kamm said, adding that “my first reaction was to tell Alice.”

More than 200 other US citizens are still being held in China, according to the Dui Hua Foundation. Family members of the three Americans – Dawn Michelle Hunt, Kai Li and Nelson Wells – are scheduled to testify at Wednesday’s China-Executive Commission hearing, which focuses on detained US citizens.

“Mr. Kai Li had a stroke and Nelson Wells (had) serious medical problems,” Kamm said. He said another American, Mark Swidan, a Texas businessman currently on death row in China on drug-trafficking charges, was “pretty sick.”

Swidan’s mother is Katherine told CBS News in April he feared he might take his own life after more than ten years behind bars.

“We are worried and afraid that Mark will end his life,” she told “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan after US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns visited her son in prison, adding an urgent call for President Biden to be released.

All forms of early prison release require court approval in China, except for medical parole, he added.

“It doesn’t have to be approved by the court. It can be approved by the prison. So, I hope that the prison in each case will take some mercy – they have suffered long enough – and release them in the humanitarian field,” he said.