07 Jul 01

FOLLOWERS of the Falun Gong spiritual movement have begun a two-week cross-country trip to protest persecution in China which they claim took the lives of 15 women in a labour camp last month.

Vans carrying 11 members of the [group], which is outlawed in China, left California for Washington DC today after rallies outside the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles and City Hall in San Francisco. They planned to stop for rallies in major cities along the way to Washington.

Gina Sanchez, a protest organiser, expected as many as 3,000 people from throughout the country to converge on Washington on July 17 for rallies and meetings with lawmakers.

"We are travelling the entire breadth of America to send an SOS," Sanchez said. "We are seeking every means - diplomatic, legal and humanitarian - to stop any further killing of innocent people in China."

Speakers at the rallies gave personal accounts of mistreatment in China while blaming the June 20 deaths of the 15 practitioners on beatings by guards at the labour camp in Heilongjiang Province.

Chinese officials said this week some Falun Gong followers hanged themselves in a mass suicide, but gave conflicting accounts of the circumstances and numbers of deaths.

[...]

During Beijing's two-year crackdown, thousands of followers have been sent to labour camps. The group claims 250 practitioners have died from police brutality since July 1999.

At the rally in Los Angeles, Chinese citizen Mingjing Xue said she spent more than 100 days in a labour camp, where she and other practitioners were not allowed to speak or meditate. At one point, she and another person were handcuffed together to the window of their cell.

"This position made us unable to squat or use the toilet," the 53-year-old woman said. "For three days and two nights, we were not given any food or water, nor were we allowed to sleep."

In San Francisco, several dozen protesters held blue banners that read "SOS Urgent: Rescue Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in China" in both Chinese and English.

Christine Lin, an 11-year-old student from San Francisco, said she was imprisoned without food for two days while visiting friends in Beijing last summer because local authorities learned that she and her mother practised Falun Gong.

"That was the very first night I slept on a cement floor with no sheet underneath," Lin said.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,2290940%255E1702,00.html