NEW YORK, Sep 15, 2000 -- (Reuters) After two weeks in an overcrowded Beijing jail where he said he was forced to squat with his hands behind his head during interrogations, Chinese poet Huang Beiling called on the country's intellectuals to follow the example of Falun Gong meditators by fighting government oppression through widespread civil disobedience.

"I respect them," Huang said of the practitioners of Falun Gong, who continue to defy a year-long crackdown by the Chinese government that has included mass arrests.

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"They have been doing this peacefully. When they're beaten, they don't hit back. The intellectual community should do the same thing," said Huang, who writes under the name Bei Ling and was jailed last month for distributing a literary journal called "Tendency".

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