Wednesday, 04-Dec-2002

BEIJING, Dec 4 (AFP) - Fifteen Falun Gong members have died recently either in police custody or shortly after being released from detention centers where they were tortured, the outlawed spiritual group's New York office said in a statement received here Wednesday.

Police at several detention centers where the victims were kept refused to comment, saying only: "I'm not clear about this."

However, a police officer at the Mishan City Detention Center in northern Heilongjiang province confirmed to AFP that one of its Falun Gong inmates had died.

"She died at a hospital," he said.

Asked why she died, he said: "I don't know."

Liu Guiying, 43, was detained in March for openly telling the facts of the persecution against Falun Gong to others, the group said in a statement.

After being detained, police tried to transfer her to the notorious Wanjia Labor Camp, but the camp turned her away because she showed symptoms of hypertension. Liu was instead transported back to detention center where she died in police custody on October 24, the group said.

Her body was secretly cremated by authorities two days later, it said.

Other cases cited by Falun Gong could not be immediately confirmed.

One of them, Li Hongwei, died on October 7 at a detention center in northern China's Liaoning province, and family members said his corpse was covered with injuries from torture by electric shock, the group said.

Gai Liu, 60, from central China's Henan province, was arrested in September

and two nights later she was sent to the hospital and died shortly afterwards, the group said.

Police reports claim that the cause of death was related to disease, but Lius relatives found a deep knife wound on her wrist.

Li Fenghua, a 44 year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Heilongjiang province was taken into custody and sent to a labor camp for one year where she endured severe brainwashing and later fell into a coma. She never awakened and passed away on November 8, the group said.

Lis relatives have presented her case to a court of law, but the local court refused to accept any cases related to Falun Gong.

The group said Kang Ruizhu was detained and taken to a brainwashing class last year where she was handcuffed to a tree for one week. She later managed to escape but was again detained in October and went on a hunger strike to protest her illegal detention.

On October 27, news from police and local officials indicated that Kang had died. She was secretly cremated by police on the same day, and her ashes were kept in the crematorium, the group said.

The [...] Falun Gong [group] has long said its practitioners who are sentenced to labor camps face torture and abuse on a daily basis.

Many practitioners have died in labor camps, either from excessive forced labor, torture and abuse, lack of adequate nutrition and medical attention, or a combination of factors, the group said.

The cause of their deaths are routinely concealed and deceptively labeled as due to "natural causes" in an attempt by officials to escape responsibility for murder, it said.

China banned Falun Gong [...] in 1999 and has since jailed or detained tens of thousands of practitioners.

http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/ad/Qchina-sect.R0nW_CD4.html