August 13, 2001

HONG KONG (AP)--A Hong Kong Falun Gong practitioner said Monday he wasn't tortured during a month spent in a mainland Chinese jail but the experience strengthened his belief in the meditation group outlawed by Beijing.

"This challenge is part of my practice," Chan Yuk-to, 34, told reporters, two days after he was freed from jail and ordered not to return to the mainland for five years.

"It helped me to prove the teachings of Falun Gong," Chan said. Chan said he wasn't physically abused but he was typically made to sit motionless for hours at a time on a wooden plank along with other prisoners in the Chaoyan District Detention Center in eastern Beijing.

Chan said he saw other Falun Gong practitioners in the detention center, but he wasn't able to communicate with them.

Chan was working in Beijing as a manager at an air-conditioning company when he was arrested July 12 for Falun Gong membership, as well as illegally possessing Falun Gong materials in his home in Beijing.

Chan says that other inmates in the jail told him Falun Gong practitioners had been tortured or kept awake all night and not given any food, but the authorities had softened their stance around early July. Chan said he suspected that might have happened because Beijing was getting close to winning its Olympics bid.

Chan's mother, Lau Yuk-ling, and followers of Falun Gong in Hong Kong lashed out Monday at what they called his "unlawful detention."

Chan said that he was unable to practice Falun Gong's slow-motion exercises while in jail but in his heart he focused on Falun Gong's teachings. He said he refused to sign a statement disavowing Falun Gong but he agreed to sign a statement saying he hadn't been tortured.

Falun Gong said Monday that Chan's detention was a "direct result of the illegal persecution of Falun Gong" by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Falun Gong claims that at least 263 members have been killed since China banned the popular meditation movement in 1999.[...]

The [Falun Gong] group is legal in Hong Kong where residents enjoy considerable freedom under the government system put in place when Britain returned this capitalist city to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.