Thursday, December 5, 2002

A Japanese man who suspects his wife has been abused by Chinese authorities for being a Falun Gong member asked the media on Wednesday for support in his bid to have her returned to Japan.

Atsushi Kaneko, a company worker from Niigata Prefecture, told the Foreign Correspondents' Club that the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo has turned down his request to visit his wife, Yoko, who has been hospitalized for more than two months in Beijing.

Yoko, a Chinese-born naturalized Japanese, was arrested by security officials after distributing Falun Gong meditation fliers in Beijing in May. She was later assigned to 18 months of "re-education through labor" at a detention facility in the capital.

When Atsushi last met her at the facility in August, she had lost weight and had bruises on her wrists, he said, adding they were only allowed to speak via an interpreter, even though his wife speaks Japanese.

After repeated inquiries through Japan's Foreign Ministry, the Chinese authorities admitted in October that his wife had been hospitalized. But the Chinese Embassy has since refused to issue a visa for him to travel there to see her, he said.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International is also urging Beijing to release Yoko because she is "prisoner of conscience."

At the news conference, Jane Dai, an Australian whose Falun Gong-practicing husband died in a Chinese labor camp last year, also spoke about the alleged persecution of followers of the spiritual exercise, which is banned in China.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20021205a7.htm