Friday, May 25th 2001

MONTREAL (CP) - A Canadian woman who was trying to visit the family she hadn't seen for three years has been arrested by Chinese authorities for practicing Falun Gong, her friends said Thursday. Ying Zhu, who lives in Montreal, vanished shortly after entering China from Hong Kong on May 10.

Worried friends in Montreal tried to locate her after learning that a woman travelling with her had been turned back at the Chinese border because she too practiced Falun Gong, a mix of [...] health exercises and the teachings of Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States.

"We called Ying's home in China, Ying's parents and her in-laws and we found they did not see her," said Yu Min Yang, a friend and Falun Gong practitioner in Montreal. "That's when we started to worry."

They learned early Thursday from a Hong Kong human rights center that she had been arrested by a Chinese government agency that investigates Falun Gong practitioners.

"She was arrested in Guang Zhou by the so-called 610 Office," Yang said. Guang Zhou is a city south of Hong Kong where Zhu's husband has been staying for the last three months on business.

"Guang Zhou is only three hours from Hong Kong by train," Yang said. "I think that made her make the decision to take a risk to go to China because I think she didn't realize that something so serous could happen. She only practiced Falun Gong here in Canada."

Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s. It was outlawed in China in 1999 after more than 10,000 members surrounded the leadership's compound in Beijing in a demonstration to demand official recognition.

China says the movement is [Chinese government's slanderous terms omitted]. Hundreds of followers have been thrown in jail. Others have been tortured or sent to labour camps, say human rights activists.

Yang and a group of followers will hold a news conference Friday to push for help from the federal government and human rights groups.

"We don't even know where she is detained," Yang said of Zhu, who is on the verge of getting her Canadian citizenship.

Even communication with Zhu's husband by e-mail and phone was difficult because Yang thinks the discussions were monitored.

"We got the feeling there was something strange about the telephone," he said. "Her husband talked over the phone very cautiously."

Her husband does not practice Falun Gong.

The Canadian Press, 2001

http://www.ab.sympatico.ca/news/Fullstories/n052511.html