Saturday 20 January 2001

The Gazette

JOHN KENNEY, GAZETTE / Liberal MP and human-rights lawyer Irwin Cotler holds up a 10,000-signature petition yesterday that helped put pressure on China for the release of KunLun Zhang.

Little more than a week ago, KunLun Zhang was imprisoned in China's notorious Wangcun labour camp, where he says he was subjected to constant brainwashing to cure him of his belief in the principles of Falun Gong.

Yesterday Zhang was in Montreal, a symbol of what can happen when Canada puts pressure on China for human-rights violations and a reminder of the thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners still being tortured and jailed in China.

After months of protest by human-rights groups and politicians in Canada and behind-the-scenes diplomacy by the federal government, China released Zhang last week.

In and Out of Prison

Since July, the Chinese-Canadian dual citizen and former McGill University professor says he has been in and out of prison, interrogated, brainwashed and tortured. In November he was sentenced to three years in a labour camp for practicing Falun Gong, a peaceful meditation and exercise regimen based on the principles of Buddhism and Taoism that China has outlawed and labeled a [í ].

Speaking in a barely audible voice, surrounded by his daughter, his lawyer and some of those who worked for his release, Zhang yesterday described parts of his six-month ordeal at the hands of the Chinese government.

"The head of the police station said to me," Zhang recalled, "as long as you are a member of Falun Gong, we can do whatever to you without taking responsibilities. If you were beaten to death, we could simply bury you and tell the outside world that you committed suicide."

Zhang said he spent time in a tiny cell with 18 other prisoners, slept on the concrete floor and subsisted on a few leaves of boiled cabbage a day. His arms, legs and torso were burned with electric shocks during torture sessions and he was told that if he screamed, his mouth would be shocked, he said.

But the most terrifying part, he said, was when he was shipped to Wangcun, a place called "Hell on Earth" by survivors.

There he was forced to watch anti-Falun Gong videos and was kept under surveillance 24 hours a day to break down his resolve, he said.

"The mental torture was worse than the physical torture," Zhang said.

But Zhang said he was fed much better and treated with relative kindness while he was at the labour camp.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who acts as Zhang's lawyer, attributed the gentleness to the fact China was under considerable pressure to free him.

"This is a common practice when pressure tactics begin to work," Cotler said. "The first step is a change in prison conditions and the second is they begin to make him look better for when he gets out."

Until the day of his release, Zhang had no idea he had become an international cause celebre. He had become a potential international embarrassment for China on the eve of an international trade mission by Canada and in the midst of China's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

Cotler said backroom dialogue between officials, trade partner to trade partner, as well as mounting public pressure contributed to his release.

Canada has important lessons to learn about how to address human-rights abuses in countries it has trade relations with, he said. The Liberal government has avoided openly criticizing China's rights record as it cultivated business ties in the last decade.

"If anything, we learn this: that the Chinese government does not like to be embarrassed," Cotler said. "This was an international mobilization of shame against China and it worked."

Vow to Fight

Even as Zhang celebrated his liberty with his supporters yesterday, he vowed to bring world attention to the estimated 50,000 other Falun Gong practitioners currently imprisoned in China and the millions of others who are threatened - among them his own wife. She remained behind in China to care for her elderly, ailing mother and is under house arrest.

There is also ShenLi Lin.

Lin's Canadian wife, Jin Yu Li, hovered quietly in the background yesterday, hoping to tell her husband's story.

Shortly after their marriage in 1999, before his paperwork to immigrate to Canada was finalized, Lin was arrested and jailed for practicing Falun Gong.

He was thrown in a labour camp somewhere in China while his wife was given 48 hours to leave the country.

She hasn't heard of or from him in a year and the Chinese embassy has denied her application for a visa to go look for him.

Cotler has agreed to take on Lin's case, too.

"My husband has done no crime," Li said in a soft voice. "He is a good person. When they arrested my husband, they took away my human rights also as a Canadian. I have a right to live with my husband and to have my family together."

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010120/5032220.html