Saturday November 25, 2000

Falun Gong members across the nation Friday protested the trial of a New York acupuncturist charged with leaking state secrets after she helped expose the Chinese government's persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

In cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, practitioners pleaded with Chinese diplomats to help end the trial of 37-year-old Teng Chunyan, which began on Thanksgiving Day.

Chunyan allegedly tipped off the foreign press to Falun Gong protests and helped arrange interviews with members of the banned group, according to her friend, Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York.

Neither Rachlin nor Chunyan's husband have spoken with her since she left for Beijing in May. "I told her it would be dangerous to go," said Rachlin, 56. But in Falun Dafa, as the practice is also called, ``everyone has a mind of their own. She just wants the whole world to know the truth.''

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/krsanjose/20001125/lo/falun_gong_members_protest_trial_1.html