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China counters claims of crackdown against sectGovernment admits 242 Falun Gong members have been punished
BEIJING, China -- In a rare disclosure, China said this week it has punished 242 organizers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. But the government continues to keep secret how many followers have been sent to labor camps during an 18-month-old crackdown. The government information appeared aimed at countering claims that thousands of sect followers are in jails or labor camps. It came in the wake of a major weekend gathering of Falun Gong members in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government outlawed the Falun Gong in July 1999. And officials in Beijing have seldom released information related to how many people from that religious movement have been punished by courts. The government has never given an accurate tally of the numbers detained outside of the court system. Under China's legal system, police have the authority to send suspects to labor camps for up to three years without trial. To combat the widely popular movement, China also set up special detention, or "transformation," centers to force sect members to recant. A Hong Kong-based rights group says at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are being held in more than 300 labor camps, with one camp for women in the northeastern city of Changchun holding 560 people. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy also has alleged that there has been 98 deaths of sect members, mostly at police hands, while in custody. Many sect leaders are known to have been imprisoned, with one organizer serving an 18-year jail sentence. China denies reports on number of detaineesThe disclosure by the Chinese government followed a weekend gathering in Hong Kong of Falun Gong followers. At protests and at a meeting, supporters of the group called on officials in Beijing to stop suppressing their outlawed movement. In comments released Monday by the official Xinhua News Agency, a spokesman for China's Cabinet said 242 sect organizers have received "criminal punishment" from courts but did not say what those punishments were. Most members sent to labor camps took part "many times in disturbances, making trouble and disrupting social order," the spokesman said. None are in camps "purely because they practiced Falun Gong." Authorities offered reduced sentences and early release to some of the detained to "educate and save them to the maximum extent," the spokesman said. The spokesman denied reports on Falun Gong Internet sites that during a January 1 protest by hundreds of practitioners a sect member was killed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Chinese officials have previously admitted the deaths of some practitioners but attributed them to suicide, natural causes or hunger strikes. Canadian Chinese follower returns home after releasePractitioners say Falun Gong's slow-motion meditation exercises and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's U.S.-based founder, Li Hongzhi, promote good health and moral living. But China's government claims Falun Gong is a cult that threatens public order and communist rule. It also alleges the group led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging them to eschew modern medical treatment. A massive Falun Gong protest on April 25, 1999, scared the government into ordering the crackdown.
Democracy campaigners also have faced harassment under the Chinese government. On Monday, authorities detained five people who petitioned Olympics organizers to persuade Beijing to release jailed democracy campaigners as it bids for the 2008 Games. One -- Hu Jiangxia, the wife of veteran dissident Wang Youcai -- said three plainclothes officers took her from her office to a police station and questioned her for three hours, warning her not to appeal to the International Olympic Committee again. Four other people who signed the petition also were detained Monday in Hu's hometown of Hangzhou, in eastern China, she said. Hu said she knew that one of those detained was later released, but she was unable to contact the other three. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that a Canadian Chinese follower of Falun Gong who was released from a labor camp last week returned to Canada on Monday. A Canadian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said 60-year-old professor Zhang Kunlun -- freed after serving less than two months of a three-year sentence -- had arrived back in Canada from Beijing. The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: Free Falun Gong now, followers tell China RELATED SITES: Falun Dafa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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