November 20, 2003

THE Falun Gong meditation group said yesterday that two of its followers - one a British citizen - have been detained in mainland China.

The group urged Hong Kong to help get them released.

Relatives of the two wept at a demonstration, claiming officials at Hong Kong's immigration department had not offered any help.

Beijing outlawed Falun Gong in 1999 [...] and has detained thousands of its mainland practitioners.

Activists say hundreds of them have died in custody from beatings or mistreatment, but China has denied mistreating the detained followers.

The group is legal in Hong Kong, which reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997 but still enjoys western-style civil liberties.

Falun Gong has in the past complained that Hong Kong officials have not helped followers from the former colony who get into trouble in the mainland.

"We're urging the Hong Kong government to take up a more active role" in the case, said a spokesman, Kan Hung-cheung.

An immigration spokesman said officials were in touch with family members and "will continue to follow up".

Falun Gong identified one of those detained as [Wayne] Tang, 51, a businessman who, like many people in Hong Kong, has a British passport.

They said he and three employees from a company his relatives run in the mainland city of Shenzhen, on the Hong Kong border, were taken away on 13 November.

Mainland police later told Mr Tang's family that he was suspected of organizing Falun Gong activities, the group said.

A British consulate general spokeswoman, Vanessa Gould, had no immediate comment.

Falun Gong said the other follower, Fu Xue-ying, 28, a housewife, has been detained by police in Shenzhen since 30 October, when she was found distributing Falun Gong video discs.

Falun Gong has been anathema to the Communist Party since the ban was issued on 20 July, 1999, just weeks after 10,000 of its followers surrounded the Communist Party's citadel, Zhongnanhai.

[...]

Since the ban, tens of thousands of Falun Gong members have been sent to labor camps to be reformed of their beliefs. Thousands of others have been imprisoned, tortured and harassed by the security apparatus.

Last year Hong Kong refused entry to 20 of the [group's] followers in a bid to prevent embarrassing demonstrations during President Jiang Zemin's visit for celebrations to mark the fifth anniversary of the handover.

China deported four British members of the movement, including a Scottish pensioner, Robert Gibson, during a protest in Tiananmen Square.

The protests came on the last day of a three-day national holiday for the lunar new year.

[...]

URL: http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=1280152003