CNN: China blamed for Falun Gong death

BEIJING, China -- Police in China beat to death a handicapped follower of the banned Falun Gong meditation [group], the group said Thursday.

Zhang, a 38-year-old laid-off factory worker, walked with a cane.

He died three days after he was dragged from his home in Shuangcheng, a city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the group said in a statement from the United States.

An official at the Shuangcheng detention center confirmed that Zhang was dead, but said he died of illness after going on a hunger strike.

[...]

Police refused requests for comment.

The Falun Gong said Zhang had been harassed by police and local officials and detained several times.

He was declared dead on arrival at a hospital emergency room June 12.

His family was not informed until the next day and forbidden to view his body or have an autopsy performed, the Falun Gong said.

The location of his remains is unknown, the group added.

Fatal measures

Zhang is the first Falun Gong member reported dead since Chinese authorities announced harsher punishment for practitioners.

Rules published June 10 allow courts to try followers who spread information about Falun Gong for subversion, separatism, and leaking state secrets -- all crimes punishable by death.

The Falun Gong said Zhang's death brought to 224 the number of followers who have died in police custody since China launched a crackdown on the group nearly two years ago.

Other independent sources say more than 100 have died.

China says some followers committed suicide in custody, but denies abuses.

Falun Gong attracted millions of members during the 1990s [...]

China calls the group a [Chinese government's slanderous term omitted] and outlawed it in July 1999.

Dodging the crackdown

Public protests by [group] followers in Beijing's Tiananmen Square have grown increasingly rare, since harsh suppression measures were imposed.

Practitioners protesting in Beijing have routinely been kicked, punched, dragged across the ground and thrown into police vans in view of Chinese and foreign tourists.

But adherents have continued to anger officials by stuffing mailboxes with their literature, spraying graffiti supporting the group, and posting information online, including the names and phone numbers of police and prison officers whom they accuse of abusing and killing practitioners.

The government has been trying to counter negative reports on its crackdown by taking foreign reporters on tours of labor camps were members are detained.

The camps are invariably clean and their inmates passive. Wardens deny abusing followers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/21/china.falungong/index.html