Reuters: Falung Gong warns of post-Olympic bid crackdown

SYDNEY: China's banned Falun Gong spiritual group has called for international scrutiny to ensure Beijing does not crack down harder on "undesirables" after winning a bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"We hope that China will not see winning the Olympics as a license to kill," Falun Gong spokesman Erping Zhang said in a statement posted on the group's website, www.faluninfo.net.

"In just the past week, we have had two reports of mass killings of Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese labour camps," he said. "We do not want to see more."

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise [...]. It was banned in China in July 1999, accused of [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous terms omitted].

Beijing was on Friday awarded the 2008 Games despite international concern at China's human rights record, including the detention of thousands of Falun Gong followers in re-education camps in recent years.

It campaigned to stage the event, which it just missed out on to Sydney in 2000, amid a harsh crackdown on Falun Gong, an anti-crime drive that has brought some 1,800 executions in three months and tough new curbs on newspapers and Web sites.

However Beijing Olympic bid organisers last week promised to lift restrictions on the media and to improve human rights if the Chinese capital was awarded the Games.

The Falun Gong said such promises had been made before.

"History has shown us that the (Chinese president) Jiang Zemin regime has taken advantage of every major international event to silence all dissenting voices, and Falun Gong practitioners will most likely continue to bear the brunt of such political campaigns," the statement said.

It said many people, not only Falun Gong practitioners, had already died in the weeks leading up to Friday's International Olympic Committee (IOC) vote as Beijing began to rid itself of so-called "undesirables".

"We must call upon the international community to monitor China's compliance with its own promises and hold it to its word," it said.

China said earlier this month three followers of Falun Gong had died and eight were saved in a mass suicide attempt at the Wanjia Labour Camp on June 21.

Falun Gong followers overseas denied the official explanation, saying more than 15 female followers had been tortured to death at the camp in Harbin in the Heilongjiang province.

The group said, in another statement posted on Friday on the website, there was now a second report of mass killings of their supporters in the province, with fears more than ten male supporters were beaten to death at the Changlinzi camp. (Reuters)

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