BEIJING, Dec 28, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China has released three members of the banned Falungong spiritual group who hold green card work permits for the United States after 13 days of forced labor, a human rights group said Tuesday.

Feng Lili, Zhao Chen and Huang Wun were released into Hong Kong late Monday after being kept in a detention center in the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement In China said.

A woman at the Futian Detention Center in Shenzhen confirmed to AFP the three had been released, but refused to answer any more questions.

The three California residents, two women and one man, were arrested on December 15 on charges of disturbing social order for trying to meet with Chinese Falungong members.

Not being US citizens, the Chinese authorities only released them after pressure from international media, the information center said.

"Feng was forced to work 12 hours a day making combs. She was kept in a room with 30 drug addicts and prostitutes," the information center said.

The Ph.D biologist and assistant professor at the Scripps Research Institute in California had to sleep on the floor because there were not enough beds, said the center.

"She was so cold she was shivering constantly," the information center said.

In the past few weeks, the Chinese government has detained several foreign citizens and green card holders as well as Falungong members from Hong Kong, where the group is still legal.

The authorities tend to release foreign citizens after one or two days, but regard green-card holders as Chinese nationals and have threatened to treat them in the harsh manner in which it has treated Chinese practitioners.

An official at a US consulate in Guangzhou has said the US government has no power to demand the release of green card holders, who still hold Chinese citizenship.

The Chinese government banned the Falungong on July 22 and has viewed the group as the biggest threat to communist authority since the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

A Beijing court on Sunday sentenced four key Falungong members to prison terms of seven to 18 years, one of the harshest prison terms handed down to any political or religious opponents.

The group, which practices meditation and breathing exercises, advocates clean living and high moral values and boasts a worldwide membership of some 100 million.

Nationwide, over 35,000 Falungong members have been detained by Chinese police since the group was banned, but most have been released after undergoing "education" by Chinese authorities.

However more than 2,000 are believed to have been sent to labor camps.

In Beijing alone, nearly 100 Falungong members have been detained each day, the information center said.

((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)