AP: 'Insider' who fell from grace

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A year ago, Wang Kai was Falun Gong's man on the inside, a convert and a well-placed official who championed the spiritual movement within China's communist Government. Since the crackdown on Falun Gong, Mr Wang has fallen from grace. He has been interrogated, demoted from his prestigious job in the state sports commission and harangued to renounce his beliefs.

"But I won't change my ways. If I think something is good, I say it's good," said Mr Wang.

The Falun Gong movement has faced China's broadest political witch-hunt for a decade.

Followers persist in practising, many in private, some openly. They have staged peaceful protests daily in Tiananmen Square, China's political heart, with police detaining 40 to 50 followers a day, said a Communist Party official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The movement has not only attracted retirees, but also university professors, military officers and government officials - the very elite that the Communist Party relies on.

According to Mr Wang, and others in the Government, Falun Gong counted more than 150 top-level bureaucrats among its followers. They included Propaganda Ministry functionaries, aides to the cabinet, two staff members to the national legislature, even an assistant to Wei Jianxing, No 6 in the ruling inner circle in charge of enforcing party discipline, the sources said.

Mr Wang took up Falun Gong four years ago. Soon, he began urging that the officially atheistic Government do more to promote Falun Gong, despite a growing wariness among lower-level officials about the group's soaring popularity. This worry soon escalated to President Jiang Zemin ordering an official ban last July.

Many jailed followers have tales of abuse. Wang Yufeng, detained with 139 other adherents on their way to Beijing from Jiamusi city in the northeast in November, said half her group had been sent to a labour camp after they refused to pay 5,000 yuan (HK$4,700) and renounce Falun Gong in writing.

Compelled to work 13-hour days, dozens went on a hunger strike last month for three days or more, until guards force-fed them, Ms Wang Yufeng said.

Mr Wang Kai was arrested on July 20, two days before the official ban on Falun Gong, and held for more than five weeks.

His interrogators kept him sleepless for 10 days and questioned him for 30 hours at one point, he said.

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