02/08/2000 Reuters English News Service

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Steelworker Niu Jinping says he has been beaten by police and jailed in a squalid cell, yet he refuses to renounce his membership in Falun Gong.

He stubbornly kept up his faith in the banned spiritual movement even when authorities sent him to a mental institute, where he was fed powerful sedatives. When he was told to choose between his beliefs and his job, he still would not bend.

Now, as he tells his story to a foreign reporter, he knows he risks more punishment.

But his convictions are unshakeable.

"The government has made a big mistake," said Niu, 46. "It is our duty to point this out to them."

Fuelling the daring and seemingly endless protests by Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing is anger at the idea of otherwise law-abiding citizens being labelled criminals because of their spiritual beliefs.

"I've never broken the law in my life and my basic right to exist - my job, my salary, even my lunch allowance - has been stripped away," said another Falun Gong member Zhang Lianying, 38, an accountant. "I have to speak out," she said.

BITTER EXPERIENCES

One of the extraordinary aspects of the Falun Gong protests is that they are happening at all, that beatings and jailings and warnings of harsh punishment from President Jiang Zemin down have failed to snuff them out.

Demonstrations in Tiananmen Square have been going on for almost a year. Public protests began last April when more than 10,000 Falun Gong followers besieged the Zhongnanhai leadership compound.

Police vans patrolling Tiananmen to cart away detained protesters have become a common sight.

Scores of devotees of the movement, which mixes popular Buddhism and Taoism with meditation and breathing exercises, have been detained this week alone.

"There are a lot of disciples who've suffered more bitter experiences than I have," said Zhang.

Both Zhang and Niu, Beijing residents who said they began practicing Falun Gong in their local park in late 1997, said they were aware they were taking a huge risk by recounting their experiences to a foreign journalist.

"I've done nothing wrong and I wanted the government to understand what good the practice had done for me," Niu said of his decision to join sect protests last year.

RETRIBUTION AFTER PROTESTS

Niu said he took part in last April's protests around Zhongnanhai. But his troubles began in October, when he became one of thousands of adherents taken away in protests at Tiananmen Square after China declared Falun Gong an "evil cult". The movement had been banned in July.

His first detention lasted six days, during which he said he was crowded in a small cell with 11 other prisoners, most of them convicted robbers. Sleeping on a filthy bare floor with an open hole for a toilet, Niu said he won converts among his cellmates who admired his tenacity.

He said after he was beaten by guards who caught him meditating, he simply got up earlier before the guards were awake. He said he was released after six days because the police couldn't handle the overflow of Falun Gong detainees.

"After two days at home, I was visited by three men wearing white coats who told me they worked at a police hospital and wanted to examine me for mental illness," Niu said.

INTERNET HIGHLIGHTS CASE

Niu was given a strong sedative and put through a battery of psychological tests at the Huilongguan hospital in Beijing. He was released seven days later.

"My case was reported very promptly on the Internet, and the hospital paid close attention to that," he said.

Weeks after his release, the now jobless Niu went to the southern city of Guangzhou for a Falun Gong meeting, an act that got him a 28-day detention spell in the Beijing suburb of Shunyi.

Zhang, who joined Niu at the Guangzhou meeting and was dealt the same 28-day sentence in Shunyi, recounted a similar cycle of petition, followed by detention and eventual loss of her job.

She said she was trussed up and dragged by her ponytail repeatedly and had witnessed a version of water torture in which buckets of ice-cold water were poured down the backs of detainees.

"I was within my lawful right under China's constitution to petition the government for redress," she said.

"A policeman told me: 'Don't lecture me on human rights or read me the Constitution. I only know the government has declared your sect evil and you a criminal'," she said.

Released on January 6, the pair have since been hounded by local police and warned against joining fresh protests. Both said they heeded the protest warnings but have not stopped meditation.

"I was a drinker, a gambler and a womaniser until I took up Falun Gong," said Niu, who also credited his breathing exercises with curing nerve and heart ailments.

"I simply cannot not practice Falun Gong," he said.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.