US lawmaker calls on Beijing to release all political prisoners

Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Mandarin article.

Representative John Moolenaar, the chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is calling on Beijing to release all political prisoners in China.

October 30 marks the International Day of Political Prisoners, a day that originated in the Soviet Union era and observed by a global coalition of rights groups to show solidarity with political prisoners worldwide.

"The tragic cases of Joshua Wong, Jimmy Lai, Dr. Youlin Chen, Min Zin, Pastor Gao Quanfu, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, and countless others exemplify how the CCP will use arbitrary detainment, wrongful detention, and collective punishment for political leverage and to silence those who fight for freedom and liberty," the Michigan Republican said in a statement on Friday.

Joshua Wong is a prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, and Jimmy Lai is the founder of the now-closed Apple Daily. Both are serving sentences under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing. Lai is serving a 20-year sentence, while Wong, already jailed for subversion, faces additional prison time after pleading guilty to a foreign collusion charge.

Youlin Chen is a U.S. citizen and Boston-based seismologist who was detained in November 2024 and charged with espionage in May 2025. He is still awaiting trial. Min Zin is a Burmese American scholar who was detained in June after traveling to China for an academic conference. He is being held on suspicion of espionage, but it's not clear if he's been charged with any crime. The U.S. State Department says both men are being wrongfully detained.

Pastor Gao Quanfu is the jailed leader of an unregistered house church called the Light of Zion Church in Xi'an. He was detained in May of 2025 on charges of fraud along with his wife and is awaiting trial. Dr. Gulshan Abbas, a retired Uyghur physician, is serving a 20-year sentence on terrorism-related charges, imposed in 2019.

"This is a day to honor the courage and bravery of all the dissidents who have stood up to the CCP’s authoritarian rule and are unjustly imprisoned," Moolenaar noted in his statement Friday. "We must make sure the world does not forget that China has jailed these people for believing in freedom and democracy, and I again call on the CCP to release all of its political prisoners."

“We must make sure the world does not forget that China has jailed these people for believing in freedom and democracy, and I again call on the CCP to release all of its political prisoners," he said.

The U.S. House Select Committee on China was established in January of 2023. The committee is tasked with investigating and providing policy recommendations regarding the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

Also on Friday, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) posted its most updated Chinese political prisoner database on X.

According to the independent government agency, as of Friday, the database, which the commission says captures “only a fraction of the actual number of detentions,” has documented 11,486 cases of political and religious prisoners in China, including 2,613 cases of active detention.

“On the International Day of Political Prisoners, all those imprisoned for speaking the truth, defending human rights, and peacefully exercising their fundamental freedoms should be remembered,” the CECC said.