December 2, 2000

Canadian held in Chinese labour camp

Member of banned [group]: Daughter in Ottawa fears he may die in custody

Anne Marie Owens

National Post

Lingdi Zhang, a university student in Ottawa, fights for information about her father.

A 59-year-old Canadian professor and sculptor has been sent to a Chinese labour camp for three years for his involvement in a banned spiritual movement.

Kunlun Zhang, who taught in the art department at McGill University before returning to his native China in 1996 to tend to a sick relative, has been detained in a labour camp without trial since Nov. 15.

It is believed to be the first time Chinese authorities have detained someone with a foreign citizenship for their belief in the spiritual movement Falun Gong.

The popular movement, which is also known as Falun Dafa and combines meditation and exercise with a doctrine loosely based on Buddhist and Taoist teachings, has been the subject of a government crackdown which has sent many of its believers to jail, some of whom have died in custody.

Canadian authorities in China have been denied their request to visit Mr. Zhang.

Mr. Zhang's wife, Shumei Zhang, is under house arrest in China and has also been denied any contact with him since he was taken into custody.

"It's very worrisome because so many practitioners of Falun Gong have died in police custody," said Mr. Zhang's daughter Lingdi, a university student in Ottawa. "I fear he will not be able to survive the three years of constant abuse that he will be subjected to in the labour camp."

Chinese authorities have maintained Mr. Zhang is a Chinese national and have so far refused access to Canadian authorities.

Mr. Zhang emigrated to Canada in 1989 and retained his Chinese nationality when he became a Canadian citizen in 1995. He returned to China in 1996 using his Chinese passport.

"We are certainly interested given the fact that he's a Canadian citizen and that he has been tried and sentenced for what we believe is an infringement of his freedom of expression," said Roland Doiron, a spokesman with Foreign Affairs in Ottawa.

Ms. Zhang said her father was severely beaten when he was taken into custody for the first time in July after participating in Falun Gong exercises in a park.

He was released from custody after a month, but detained again on Oct. 27 as part of a mass arrest and ordered to pay the equivalent of one year's salary.

He participated in a hunger strike while in jail, and was allowed to leave temporarily because his health deteriorated.

Mr. Zhang was re-arrested two weeks ago at his home in Jinan, in eastern China's Shandong province, and sentenced without trial to three years in a labour camp.

Mrs. Zhang was also arrested for practising Falun Gong, but is being held under house arrest so that she can take care of her 90-year-old ailing mother.

The Falun Gong Practitioners of Canada, a group of Canadians who support the practice and are trying to raise awareness of its benefits, are working with Ms. Zhang to try to get the Chinese authorities to release information about her father.

"The persecution against Falun Gong practitioners is so brutal in China," said Lucy Zhou, an Ottawa software designer who is the group's spokeswoman. "It is terrible for the people who are arrested."