March 16 2002

GLASTONBURY -- A local man plans to fast for 36 hours this weekend in protest of violence against Falun Gong adherents in China.

Shun-Tien "Ted" Lin, 40, said Friday that his hunger strike is a response to mounting violence against practitioners of Falun Gong, a regimen of stretching exercises and meditation banned in China.

The Chinese government outlawed the practice in 1999 [...]. Since then, China has brutally repressed Falun Gong, practitioners and human rights advocates say, detaining more than 50,000 people. As of Friday, 378 of those detainees are said to have died in custody, amid allegations they were tortured. Nearly half of those people have died since last May, human rights advocates say.

"None of these people belonged in prison. They weren't doing anything wrong," said Mickey Spiegel, a research consultant with Human Rights Watch in New York.

Lin said he hopes his hunger strike will draw attention to the crackdown in China, which practitioners say has intensified in recent weeks.

"Four practitioners have been shot in the street in China, and I'd just like to protest so that we can raise the concern and put voices out to try to stop this persecution," said Lin, an engineer at Hamilton Sundstrand.

Lin plans to begin his hunger strike this morning, and he will be in Bushnell Park near the Capitol about 3 p.m. to hand out literature and demonstrate Falun Gong exercises, which practitioners say have health benefits. Since he started practicing the regimen of exercises and meditation in 1998, Lin says, his own health has improved and a chronic stomach ailment has disappeared.

Lin will also present a seminar on Falun Gong from 7 to 9 p.m. on March 25 at the Raymond Library, 840 Main St., in East Hartford.

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