Zhang was taken away by Xi'an police across the province in Shanghai: no legal documents, go unknown, Zhang's light case is reproduced "first controlled, then explained"

The case of the “Light of Zion” church in Xi'an has expanded again.Press Release on September 23In the morning of September 21 in Shanghai, a person claimed to have been taken from Xi'an City Public Security Bureau Monument Forest Branch. The family said that the scene did not see the legal documents, the other person said only verbally that Xi'an was suspected of assisting the Pastor "fraud"; at the time of the report, the family did not know where he was imprisoned, and did not know whether the public security had taken calls, detention, surveillance of residence or other compulsory measures.

The most prominent thing about this incident is not “whether it is being investigated,” but the state’s coercive measures have already taken place before public legal proceedings take place. A person is taken across provinces, and family members cannot get the documents, the place of detention, and the legal identity can not be confirmed, which means that the case authorities have the personal freedom, and family members and lawyers can not get even the most basic procedural information.

He was not the first time involved in this church case. In May 2025, he was taken away with several church members, including the Holy Spirit, and subsequently secured, and revoked in July

1. Two months later, he was re-controlled, effectively restarting the previously ended coercive measures without simultaneously appearing public documents.

The Christ Daily said on the same day that in the case of several local family churches,Zhengping, who also belonged to the Church of Light in Zion, was also to have been taken away in Zion on September

1. Public information about Zhengping's legal status is currently limited, but two church officials are controlled on the same day, making the incident more like a synchronized action against the church network rather than a single individual dispute.

The light case of Zion has formed a clear chain of power over the past year.CCSM quotes Luke AllianceThe pastor was arrested at home in May 2025, and his wife, Pong Feng, was later arrested. Public reports have revealed various allegations such as "use of superstition to disrupt the law implementation" and "fraud."Criminals can change, but being controlled, lawyers restricted and church networks continuously hit constitutes a stable fact.

A previously published "Situation Explanation" allegedly issued by the Xi'an Municipal Public Security Bureau of the Forest Branch of the National Insurance Group showsThe case authorities have asked the detention center to temporarily refrain from arranging meetings with lawyers on the grounds that the case may be suspected of endangering national security crimes. That is, ordinary criminal charges and national security reasons are used in the same case, resulting in further narrowing of lawyer contacts and procedures.

Zhang was taken away in Shanghai this time, pushing this model to a more obvious position: cross-provincial enforcement of compulsory measures, no documents on the scene, family members do not know where the detention is located, existing case crimes and national security reasons are intertwined. For the investigators, the real fate is not decided by the public court, but by the extent to which the front-end case processing agency can control people and information without public review.

At present, the most critical questions of responsibility have been very specific: whether Xi'an Municipal Public Security Bureau Monument Forest Branch officially filed the case, who approved the trans-provincial takeover, what compulsory measures were taken, where the place of detention was, why the family did not receive the documents in time, whether lawyers could meet. These are not "external questioning", but the basic questions that any criminal procedure should be able to answer.

When religious cases continuously rely on the first controllers and gradually supplement the charges and procedural explanations, judicial proceedings can easily turn into the persecution of the established compulsory measures. The follow-up of the case is not only about a pastor, but also about whether the public security and the national security system can bypass the transparent procedures in religious cases, turning uncertainty itself into a means of control.