AI-index: ASA 17/047/2002 01/09/2002

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The crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement

The Chinese authorities have made it clear that one of the main targets of the 'strike hard' campaign is the Falun Gong spiritual movement which has been banned in China since July 1999 along with other so-called '[slanderous word omitted] organizations'. There are serious concerns that the Chinese authorities have sanctioned the use of violence as one of the means to eradicate the group.

Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners continue to be detained in China where they are at serious risk of torture or ill-treatment, particularly if they refuse to renounce their spiritual beliefs. The vast majority of them are believed to be held in re-education through labor centers, a form of administrative detention imposed without charge or trial. Those accused of being Falun Gong leaders or organizers have been sentenced to prison terms, while others have been held in psychiatric hospitals. Amnesty International considers all those detained in violation of their rights to freedom of belief, expression and association, and who have not used or advocated violence, to be prisoners of conscience.

One example is Yoko Kaneko (also known as Luo Rong), a Chinese citizen with permanent residency in Japan, who was detained while handing out Falun Gong leaflets to passersby in Beijing on 24 May 2002. One month later, on 24 June 2002, the Beijing People's Government Committee for the Administration of Re-education through Labor concluded that Luo Rong (Yoko Kaneko) had 'resisted the enforcement of national laws' and 'disrupted the order of social administration' by distributing Falun Gong 'propaganda material'. She was assigned to one-and-a-half years' re-education through labor. Amnesty International considers her to be a prisoner of conscience and is calling for her immediate and unconditional release.

Amnesty International continues to receive regular reports of Falun Gong members being tortured or ill-treated in custody. They include Zhao Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner from Changchun City, Jilin Province, who stated after his release that he had subjected to beatings with fists and electric shock batons, sleep deprivation, force-feeding and other forms of torture during his detention in Tuanhe Re-education through Labour Camp in Beijing between June 2000 and March 2002. According to Falun Gong sources, over 450 Falun Gong practitioners have died in custody (or shortly after their release), most as a result of torture.

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