Friday June 15, 4:19 PM

BEIJING, June 15 (AFP) - A member of China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement has died while in detention in northeastern Liaoning province, possibly after maltreatment by police, local residents told AFP Friday.

Chi Yulian, who lived in Lanjin, a suburb of the port city of Dalian, and was known by locals to be a Falun Gong practitioner, died earlier this month in police custody, said a resident from nearby Wangjia village.

Chi, the mother of a 10-year-old boy, was cooking in her kitchen on May 29, when police officers stormed her home, handcuffed her and threw her onto her bed, a Falun Gong press release said.

The officers searched the house, and after they found Falun Gong-related material, they dragged her barefoot to a waiting police car, dragging aside Chi's husband when he tried to stop them, according to the press release.

"She was a Falun Gong practitioner and she was sent to a detention center," an officer at the nearby Ganjingzi district police station told AFP by telephone. "That's all I know."

One week later, an official at the detention center called Chi's husband telling him that she had had a heart attack and had been sent to a hospital for emergency treatment, the Falun Gong press release said.

When he went to the detention center the following day, he was told that Chi had died on the way to the hospital, the press release said.

Chi's relatives have not been allowed to see her body, which remains at the detention center, dissected and autopsied, according to the release.

The press release quoted Chi's family as saying they had not been allowed to see any legal documents and that the only reason given for the detention was her membership of the Falun Gong movement.

When Chi's husband raised the possibility of filing a lawsuit, a lawyer told him that local courts did not accept Falun Gong-related cases, the press release said.

A resident of Lanjin, the suburb where Chi lived with her family, told AFP by telephone that Chi was not the only member of the Falun Gong in the area.

"We've got lots of Falun Gong people here, but we don't know who is a member and who isn't," he said.

The Falun Gong, which teaches clean living [...], was banned by China in July 1999 as a [Chinese government's slanderous term omitted] after holding an unprecedented 10,000-strong protest in Beijing.

Tens of thousands of members have since been detained, sent to labor camps, or imprisoned.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010615/1/xucb.html