CHINA CRISIS NEWS BULLETIN #23

BREAKING NEWS: Beijing (dpa) - Beijing's sprawling security apparatus has expanded its "black list" of political undesirables to include Chinese Falun Gong practitioners living overseas from returning to the mainland, a Hong Kong-based human rights monitoring group said on Wednesday (January 5th).

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CHINA CRISIS NEWS BULLETIN #23áá 1/7/2000

Monitoring News of the Persecution of Falun Gong

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Contact Gail Rachlin at Rachlin Management & Media Group, [phone] or visit this website:á http://www.falundafa.org

• ááááááá CHINESE SEND DETAINED PRACTITIONERS TO MENTAL HOSPITALS

• ááááááá HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH TO UN: CENSURE CHINA!

• ááááááá CHINESE AMERICAN SCIENTIST DETAINED, FREED THROUGH PRESSURE

CHINESE OFFICIALS SEND DETAINEES TO MENTAL HOSPITALS; REPORTS OF INJECTIONS THAT CAUSE "PERMANENT PHYSICAL DAMAGE"

One of many similar reports being received from China: The Beijing Fangshan Chengguan police station has sent over 50 practitioners they arrested to a hospital for mental diseases (located in Zhou-Kou-Dian) and has not yet released them.á According to authorities, practitioners were held in custody so that they could not protest during the return of Macao to China.á Each of them had to pay 800 Yuan to1000 Yuan for "expenses."á It was said that the officials in the police station had the right to decide when to release them...á Practitioners report that some of these mental hospital detainees are being injected with drugs, including powerful muscle relaxants, that interfere with their health and physical well being and can cause permanent damage...á For decades, the Soviet Union sent dissidents to mental hospitals, a practice widely condemned as barbaric.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: UNITED NATIONS MUST CENSURE CHINA

(New York, December 27, 1999) -- Human Rights Watch today condemned the harsh sentences handed down to four leaders of the Falun Gong movement on December 27, 1999, and called for the release of more than one hundred others who have been formally charged but not yet put on trial for their involvement with Falun Gong. Following a summary trial on Sunday in Beijing, Li Chang, Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu, and Yao Jie were given sentences ranging from seven to eighteen years in prison.

"These Falun Gong members should never have been arrested, much less given heavy sentences," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division. "If freedom of association and assembly mean anything in China, then Falun Gong members should be free to recruit others, to practice their exercises and meditation in public, and to protest their own persecution."

Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations to publicly censure the Chinese government at the next meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva for the suppression of Falun Gong, imprisonment of pro-democracy activists, widespread torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and other violations of international human rights standards

CHINESE-AMERICAN SCIENTIST DETAINED IN CHINA, RELEASED BY PRESSURE

(San Diego Union) Surrounded by test tubes and a maze of laboratory equipment at Scripps Research Institute's immunology department, scientist Lili Feng is back in her safe and sanitized world of science.á Yet Feng suddenly breaks down when she speaks of her arrest on a recent visit to China for being a practitioner of the banned Falun Gong meditative movement.

Feng was en route to central China, where her family settled after the revolution, to visit her 78-year-old father and 69-year-old mother when she was arrested at 1 a.m. Dec. 15 at a friend's house in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.á She was meeting with a group of Falun Gong friends, telling them how much support the movement has garnered abroad.

Feng was released at dawn after lengthy questioning, but was detained later that day when she returned to the Shenzhen police station to collect her travel documents. Feng said she already had converted to Falun Gong fellow prisoners, including prostitutes and drug addicts, whom she called the discarded underclass of China.á She asked to stay two extra days in detention, despite conditions there -- no shoes, little clothing and forced labor manufacturing hairbrushes 12 hours a day.á Feng's detention triggered diplomatic inquiries and political pressure.á U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. asked American officials to intervene.á When international media inquiries inundated authorities, police released Feng.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT FALUN GONG AND TO OBTAIN A BACKGROUND VIDEO AND OTHER MATERIAL, CALL GAIL RACHLIN AT RACHLIN MANAGEMENT AND MEDIA GROUP, 212-501-8080

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IF YOU RECEIVED THIS BULLETIN IN ERROR, and would prefer to be taken off the list, please FAX us your fax number (from the top of page 1) to: 650-558-5960.á We apologize for any inconvenience.á Thank you.