HONG KONG, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement said on Wednesday that China, which has outlawed the movement, was extending its persecution to Hong Kong-based Falun Gong followers.
Hong Kong practitioner Wang Yaoqing told a news conference China had jailed her for eight months after she was arrested in March in southern China's Shenzhen.
Wang said she went on a hunger strike during detention.
"When I was very weak due to fasting, they asked me to clean bathrooms, mopping floors and washing all the dishes," said Wang. "Because I refused to eat, the administrator forced me to drink pepper water, and scolded me all the time."
"They asked other criminals to watch me 24 hours a day. As soon as they discovered that I was practising exercises, they would ask other inmates to beat me up," said Wang, who came to live in Hong Kong about seven years ago.
"When I was released on November 4, I found out my house in Shenzhen was auctioned off by the court without notification to my family," she said.
While the movement is banned in China, it is legal in Hong Kong, a former
British colony which returned to the Chinese fold in mid-1997 as a highly autonomous administrative region.
JAIL
Earlier this year, another Hong Kong-based Falun Gong follower Chu O-ming, together with Beijing practitioner Wang Jie, were arrested by Chinese police after suing President Jiang Zemin and his subordinates for cracking down on the group.
"Their whereabouts are still unknown to this day," said Sharon Xu, a spokeswoman for the movement in the territory.
She said mainland China had denied entry to more than 30 Hong Kong practitioners and confiscated their travel documents.
Chan Ming-kwong, another spokesman for Falun Gong adherents in Hong Kong, said Chinese authorities had tortured to death at least 86 mainland followers of the movement since July last year, when the ruling Communists started a crackdown on the group.
Chinese authorities have acknowledged several deaths in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illnesses.
Local practitioners accused Chinese authorities of passing electricity through the bodies of Falun Gong adherents, hitting their heads with spiky brushes, forcing urine and excrement into their mouths, and kicking pregnant women in the stomach.
They claimed that in China female Falun Gong practitioners were stripped and thrown into the cells of male inmates.
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/falun_073.htm#Anchor-49575
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Category: Accounts of Persecution
