Ottawa Citizen: Montreal Woman Arrested for Practicing Falun Gong; Ying Zhu's freedom lost on China visit

May 25, 2001

Falun Gong practitioners are again appealing to the Canadian government for help in securing the release of a Montrealer believed jailed during a visit to China this month.

Ying Zhu, a 35-year-old permanent resident of Canada described as being "very close" to obtaining her citizenship, disappeared on May 10 during a trip to visit her parents in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

Prior to her trip to Guangdong, Ms. Zhu had joined a pro-Falun Gong demonstration in Hong Kong, where the Beijing crackdown against the meditation movement is less draconian than in mainland China.

Yesterday, the Hong Kong Human Rights Information Centre confirmed that Ms. Zhu had been arrested and is one of tens of thousands of Chinese citizens being held for practicing Falun Gong.

Earlier this year, pressure from the Canadian government prompted the release of former Montrealer Kunlun Zhang -- who holds both Chinese and Canadian citizenship -- from a Chinese labour camp.

Mr. Zhang, a renowned sculptor who had lived in Montreal for seven years, returned to China in 1996 to help care for his ailing mother. He was arrested last summer for practicing Falun Gong in a public park.

Initially, Chinese officials refused Canadian requests for his release because Mr. Zhang had returned to his homeland using his Chinese passport. But in January, apparently bowing to pressure from international media and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley on the eve of a Team Canada trade mission to Beijing, China released Mr. Zhang.

Today, Falun Gong practitioners in Montreal will press Canada to urge China to release Ms. Zhu.

Spokesman Yumin Yang said last night that Ms. Zhu is a landed immigrant who has been in Canada for several years. He said her husband, Yan Sun, is a Canadian citizen and that the couple have a business that operates both in China and Canada.

Falun Gong, which [...] combines spiritual teachings and gentle stretching exercises, gained enormous popularity in China in the 1990s. But by 1999, when an estimated 100 million people had become part of the movement, Chinese President Jiang Zemin began to view Falun Gong as a threat to the [party's name omitted] party's authority, declared the movement an "[Chinese government's slanderous term omitted]" and launched a violent crackdown.

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