AFP: Two Falun Gong Practitioners Held for Suing Chinese President

HONG KONG, Oct 9, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Two Falun Gong practitioners are being held in Beijing after they allegedly tried to sue Chinese President Jiang Zemin and two other high-ranking mainland officials for persecuting the spiritual group, a Falun Gong spokeswoman said Monday.

Chu O-ming, 43, a Hong Kong businessman, and 37-year-old Beijing resident Wang Jie, were reportedly arrested early last month after they posted a letter of complaint to the supreme people's court in Beijing, asking for Jiang to be sued.

In their letter, they also asked that director of the general office of the party's central committee Zeng Qinghoung, and vice chairman of the central committee of secrecy Luo Gan, be sued, said Falun Gong spokeswoman Hui Yee-han.

In a press conference on Monday, the Falun Gong group called on the Hong Kong government to secure Chu's release.

According to Hui, Chu and Wang were arrested while they were at a friend's house in Beijing on September 7, after police entered the house by scaling the wall.

The two are allegedly being detained in Fangshan public security bureau in Beijing.

The Chinese government considers the Falun Gong -- which combines martial arts, Buddhism and [group] founder Li Hongzhi's moral teachings -- to be the biggest threat to its rule since the 1989 student demonstrations.

In July last year, the government banned the [group] after accusing it of seeking to overthrow the state.

Since then, some 450 members have received prison sentences of up to 18 years, more than 600 have been sent to mental hospitals, 10,000 have been placed in labor camps and another 20,000 locked up in temporary detention centers, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

But the practice is tolerated in Hong Kong under the "one country, two systems" concept which guaranteed Hong Kong's autonomy after its handover in 1997.

Since the ban, Falun Gong followers in Hong Kong have staged exercises outside the liaison office of the central government in Hong Kong.

However, the number of practitioners of Falun Gong in Hong Kong has dwindled from 1,000 to just a few hundred. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)