"Chinese Labor Camp Deaths Disputed"

by John Leicester (Associated Press, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - China and a human rights group said Wednesday that followers of the outlawed Falun Gong sect hanged themselves in a mass suicide at a prison camp, but the sect claimed the inmates were tortured to death.
Reports of the number of dead of ranged from three to 16, with the number differing even among government officials.
A judicial official in northeastern Heilongjiang province, Lan Jingli, said 14 followers hanged themselves from bunk beds with sheets at the province's Wanjia labor camp before dawn on June 20. Another 11 followers were stopped from hanging themselves by camp guards, Lan said.
However, a spokesman for the central government's State Council Information Office said three died and eight were rescued. All 11 were women, he said.
The other eight are now ``out of danger,'' said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. He also said the suicides occurred June 21, instead of June 20.
A human rights group, The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, first reported the deaths and said 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hanged themselves as a protest.
It said the suicides came after camp officials extended their sentences by three to six months to punish them for a hunger strike.
Falun Gong denied the group committed suicide, saying at least 15 followers were beaten to death at Wanjia on or around June 20.
On Wednesday, about 30 Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest outside China's representative office in Hong Kong, the Chinese-governed territory where the group remains legal. They called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong, cast doubt on the official claim of suicide, saying prisoners are watched around the clock in labor camps.
``There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find anything to hang themselves,'' she said.
Lan, who directs the Heilongjiang bureau that oversees the province's labor camps, said camp guards patrolled every five minutes. But he said the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their cell bunks with sheets.
The State Council spokesman identified the three dead as Zhao Yayun, 53; Zhang Yulan, 54; and Li Xiuqin, 60. All three women were from Heilongjiang, he said.
Falun Gong also identified Zhao, Zhang and Li as among those it said were killed. Li's body was cremated before her family could view it, the group said. Zhang's family saw her body June 23 and observed deep marks on her neck, it said.
Zhao's body had strangulation marks on the neck, bruises on the back and shoulders, and finger marks on the face, the group said.
During the government's two-year crackdown on the spiritual movement, thousands of followers have been sent to labor camps where China says they are counseled into breaking ties with Falun Gong.
China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will go to heaven when they die.
Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas of having a hand in the suicides.
``Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of practicing,'' he said.
Falun Gong says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide, and says the government is running a smear campaign against it.
Falun Gong says 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 1999, more than half of them in the past six months.
The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy says it has confirmed 153 deaths in the crackdown.
Falun Gong said the Wanjia camp tortures practitioners to make them renounce the group. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group, it said.
Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong followers will now be watched constantly, he said.

"Chinese officials issue conflicting accounts of Falun Gong suicide; sect says it's followers were killed"

by John Leicester (AP, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING -- Fourteen followers of the banned Falun Gong sect died in a Chinese labor camp, a provincial official said Wednesday. The official and a Hong Kong-based rights group termed the deaths mass suicide, but the sect said the prisoners were tortured to death.
However, an official with China's central government claimed the provincial official was wrong and said only three people had died in the incident at the Wanjia in the northeastern Heilongjiang province. "That's the official answer," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Lan Jingli, director of the regional judicial bureau in Heilongjiang, said the 14 inmates made ropes from sheets and hanged themselves from bunk beds during a gap between patrols by prison guards. Another 11 were rescued by camp guards as they tried to kill themselves, Lan said.
The conflicting accounts came after a Hong Kong-based rights group reported Tuesday that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hanged themselves. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said the officials had extended prisoners' sentences by three to six months because they had staged a hunger strike to protest abuse.
Falun Gong blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday that at least 15 women followers were tortured to death on or around June 20. The sect said its followers could not have committed suicide because they were watched around the clock.
"There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find anything to hang themselves," said Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong.
Lan said guards watched the practitioners closely, patrolling every five minutes, but that the followers acted quickly when the guards were gone.
"One minute is enough to kill," Lan said. "While 11 of them were immediately rescued by the camp guards, 14 others died."
Lan's account would make it the deadliest mass suicide involving Falun Gong practitioners in the government's relentless two-year crackdown on the spiritual movement, which was banned in 1999.
But the central government official, responding to reporters' phoned questions, said 11 sect followers, all women, had attempted suicide, and that eight of them survived. The survivors are now "out of danger," said the official for the cabinet's State Information Office.
China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will to go heaven when they die.
Falun Gong, however, says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide. The group disputed government claims that five people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier this year were Falun Gong practitioners.
The meditation sect says the government is running a smear campaign against it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in police custody during the crackdown on the group.
It said the Wanjia labor camp used torture to make practitioners renounce Falun Gong. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.
In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
The sect members accused the Chinese government of "inhumane and beastly crimes."
"S.O.S.: Save Falun Gong practitioners from being killed in China," said one banner displayed during the protest as members practiced their slow-motion exercises.
Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas on having a hand in the suicide.
"Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of practicing," he said. "The mass suicide of June 20 could also be caused through this way."
The government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are mistreated.
Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong followers would now be watched 24 hours a day, he said.
Meanwhile, two dozen sect members in New York started a 250-mile walk from Manhattan to Washington on Tuesday to protest Beijing's increasingly violent crackdown on the group.

"Falun Gong Deaths Set Off Dispute on Suicide Report"

by Craig S. Smith ("New York Times," July 4, 2001)

SHANGHAI - At least 10 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were reported on Tuesday to have died at a labor camp in northeast China last month, either in a group suicide or from torture.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said 10 women killed themselves to protest their treatment at the Wanjia labor camp outside Harbin in Heilongjiang Province.
A government spokesman in Beijing said early today that 14 followers had committed suicide at the camp. Another 11 attempted suicide but were stopped by camp guards, he said.
Falun Gong's Web site (www.minghui.org), based in the United States, was quick to denounce the rights group's report on Tuesday of a mass suicide, saying that 15 women at the camp had been tortured to death and that the camp had labeled their deaths suicide to cover up its crime.
Thousands of Falun Gong adherents have been sent to labor camps since the government banned the movement two years ago, arguing in part that it was a dangerous cult that had persuaded people to forgo necessary medical care or even kill themselves. Since the ban, there have been persistent reports of torture and deaths of followers by the authorities. Falun Gong's Web site says 236 followers have died as a result of confrontations with the police or prison guards.
The government has acknowledged a handful of deaths, but has attributed them all to natural causes or to suicide. And it says it thwarted several group-suicide attempts by followers. In May, the government took a group of Western reporters on a tightly controlled tour of Masanjia labor camp in northeastern Liaoning Province, which Falun Gong had also accused of torturing followers. The reporters saw nothing untoward.
Without independent reporting, it is impossible to determine which accounts are factual, and independent reporting on the subject is strictly forbidden.
Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, has spoken out against suicide in the past, though he has been silent on the subject after recent suicide reports, most notably the self-immolation of five followers on Tiananmen Square in January. Other Falun Gong members have denied that the five who set themselves on fire were actually followers, and charged that the government staged the event.
Meanwhile, Mr. Li's cryptic exhortations to followers on the Falun Gong Web site have grown increasingly strident, chastising those people who cannot endure torture or even death in defense of his cosmology, which holds that Falun Gong is engaged in a struggle with evil beings for the redemption or destruction of the universe.
"Even if a dafa cultivator truly casts off his human skin during the persecution, what awaits him is still consummation," Mr. Li wrote a few days after the labor camp deaths. Dafa means great law or dharma, and refers to Falun Gong, which can be translated as Law Wheel Practice. Consummation is an apparently transcendent event that is the goal of all followers.
"Any fear is itself a barrier that prevents you from reaching consummation," Mr. Li wrote.
No account of the labor camp deaths could be immediately verified.
A woman from the home village of Zhao Yayun, one of the dead followers identified in the reports, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that Ms. Zhao had indeed practiced Falun Gong and committed suicide.
"She died in jail," said the woman in Lequn, Heilongjiang Province, declining to give her name. "She killed herself - everybody is talking about it."
The human rights group quoted a relative of one of the dead women as saying that 16 Falun Gong followers tried a group suicide on June 20 and that 10 had died. It said the 16 were among 30 followers who had gone on a hunger strike in mid-June. The 16 hanged themselves with ropes fashioned from bedsheets after the camp extended their sentences by up to six months in punishment for the strike, the report said.
The human rights group said an officer from the township police station and a township official named Wang Guonan confirmed Ms. Zhao's death and the group suicide attempt.
The Falun Gong report, meanwhile, said that the women had all been tortured to death and that 15 had died. It said Ms. Zhao "died with injuries all over her body," but gave no information to substantiate the claim.

"14 Die in Mass Suicide in China"

by John Leicester (Associated Press, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING - Fourteen imprisoned followers of the banned Falun Gong sect committed suicide in a north China labor camp, making ropes from sheets and hanging themselves from bunk beds, a government official said Wednesday.
Falun Gong, however, blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday that at least 15 women followers were tortured to death at Wanjia labor camp in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang on or around June 20. The statement cast doubt on the official claim of a mass suicide, saying the victims were watched around the clock.
The reported suicide at Wanjia would be the most deadly involving Falun Gong practitioners confirmed by the government since it banned the spiritual movement in July 1999.
Lan Jingli, director of the Heilongjiang government's judicial bureau, said that another 11 followers were rescued by camp guards. In all, 25 Falun Gong members tried to kill themselves on June 20 in Wanjia labor camp, he said.
Lan said guards watched the practitioners closely, patrolling every five minutes. But the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their cell beds with sheets, he said.
``One minute is enough to kill,'' Lan said. ``While 11 of them were immediately rescued by the camp guards, 14 others died.''
China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will to go heaven when they die.
Falun Gong, however, says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide. The group disputed government claims that five people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier this year were Falun Gong practitioners.
The meditation sect says the government is running a smear campaign against it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in police custody during the crackdown on the group.
It said the Wanjia labor camp used torture to make practitioners renounce Falun Gong. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.
In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
The sect members accused the Chinese government of ``inhumane and beastly crimes'' and denied that the 14 had tried to commit suicide.
``S.O.S.: Save Falun Gong practitioners from being killed in China,'' said one banner displayed during the protest as members practiced their slow-motion exercises.
Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas on having a hand in the suicide.
``Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of practicing,'' he said. ``The mass suicide of June 20 could also be caused through this way.''
The government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are mistreated.
Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong followers would now be watched 24 hours a day, he said.
Meanwhile, two dozen sect members in New York started a 250-mile walk from Manhattan to Washington on Tuesday to protest Beijing's increasingly violent crackdown on the group.
The official confirmation of deaths at Wanjia came after a Hong Kong-based rights group reported Tuesday that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hung themselves after officials extended their sentences by three to six months because they had staged a hunger strike to protest abuse and beatings.
The group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, cited the relative of a practitioner who was resuscitated as saying 10 people died.

"Falun Gong denies mass suicide at prison camp"

(Reuters, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING - China's banned Falun Gong spiritual movement alleged on Wednesday at least 15 of its followers were tortured to death in a prison camp in northeastern China last month and denied reports of a mass suicide.
A local government official denied both accounts and said three Falun Gong followers at the camp had tried to commit suicide, but nobody had died.
The Falun Dafa Information Centre said in a statement 15 female practitioners were killed and several seriously injured at Wanjia Labour Camp in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, on around June 20.
However, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Tuesday 16 Falun Gong adherents tried to hang themselves at the camp that day after their sentences were extended for staging a hunger strike.
The Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said 10 people may have died.
The local official told Reuters a report had been submitted to the Ministry of Justice on the incident. Ministry officials denied any knowledge of it.
The Falun Dafa Information Centre said authorities at the labour camp claimed the women had all committed suicide despite 24-hour surveillance.
It said provincial and central government officials had gone to inspect the site and staff at the camp had not been allowed to go home in an attempt to stop news of the deaths leaking out.
Falun Gong followers overseas say the movement does not sanction killing of any sort, including suicide.
They say more than 200 Falun Gong adherents have died in Chinese police custody since Beijing banned the movement in July 1999.
China says the group is an "evil cult" responsible for the deaths of 1,660 people by suicide or refusing medical treatment. It says a handful of Falun Gong followers have committed suicide or died from illnesses while in police custody.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise with Buddhist and Taoist teachings. The group has disavowed any any political aims.

"Falun Gong members in suicide bid in China-group"

(Reuters, July 3, 2001)

HONG KONG - Sixteen followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement attempted mass suicide last month in a labour camp in China and 10 may have died, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Tuesday.
The 16 hanged themselves in Harbin city in the northern province of Heilongjiang on June 20 after their sentences were extended for staging a hunger strike, the Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement.
Communist authorities have been keeping the case secret, the group said.
About 30 Falun Gong practitioners in the labour camp began a hunger strike on June 15 to protest against the frequent beatings of the movement's adherents there. As a result, the camp lengthened their terms of imprisonment by three to six months.
A family member of one of those who had been rescued, told the information centre 10 had died in the incident.
Chinese policemen confirmed to the group there was a mass suicide and "many people" died.
The Hong Kong group said 153 Falun Gong practitioners have died because of persecution by the Chinese government since Beijing banned the movement in July 1999.
More than 10,000 Falun Gong adherents have been sent to labour camps since the crackdown, it said.
Overseas-based Falun Gong activists put the death toll in Chinese police custody at more than 200.
China says the group is an "evil cult" responsible for the deaths of 1,660 people by suicide or refusing medical treatment. It says a handful of Falun Gong followers died of suicide or neglected illnesses while in police custody.

"Falun Gong Practitioners Embark on 250-Mile 'SOS! Urgent: Rescue The Falun Gong Practitioners Persecuted in China' March"

(PRNewswire, July 2, 2001)

Press Conference in New York to Kick Off Historic March To Washington, D.C. - NY Speakers Include Supporters, Practitioners, Victims, and Family Members

NEW YORK, -- A press conference is to be held by people who practice and support Falun Gong, on Tuesday, July 3, at the Chinese Consulate, 520 12th Avenue at 42nd Street, to kick off a historic 250-mile "SOS! Urgent: Rescue the Falun Gong Practitioners Persecuted in China" walk to Washington, D.C. The month-long trek seeks to rescue those persons imprisoned in China following the Communist regime's July 20, 1999, crackdown on Falun Gong.
China's government has engaged in the brutal suppression of millions of people who practice Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese qigong practice similar in form to Tai-chi. Falun Gong is practiced peacefully worldwide, yet China's regime violently suppresses this freedom of expression. To date, at least 234 Falun Gong people have been killed in police custody, with 25 new deaths reported in the last month alone.
Walkers will leave from New York City, and proceed through Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, and Baltimore, before reaching Washington, D.C. Thousands of supporters are expected to join en route. The walk will culminate in Washington on Thursday, July 19, in a mass march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol, where a large rally will be held. The journey symbolizes the courageous, determined efforts of thousands who have demonstrated in China, and is an appeal for an immediate release of all in China who are jailed and imperiled for their practice of Falun Gong.
The press conference will consist of speeches from Falun Gong supporters, practitioners, victims of the persecution, and family members of those jailed or missing in China. Over 400 are expected.
WHEN: Tuesday, July 3rd, 2001, 10 A.M.
WHERE: Chinese Consulate, 520 12th Avenue, at 42nd Street WHO: Falun Gong supporters and practitioners, including victims who have been tortured and family members of those jailed or missing