Scotsman: City woman 'dragged from hotel by hair'

CHINESE police dragged an Edinburgh religious protester from her hotel by the hair as part of a brutal [persecution] on the outlawed Falun Gong movement, friends claimed today.

Rosemary Katzen was detained along with other westerners as they prepared to demonstrate in Beijing.

She was said to have lost a clump of hair after officers burst into hotel rooms to arrest 14 Europeans.

Police later detained more than 40 other foreigners as they demonstrated in the city''s central Tiananmen Square in a bid to raise awareness of Chinese persecution of the movement.

Miss Katzen and at least three other Britons were today flying home after being deported.

The others were named as Lee Hall, 21, an English student at Loughborough University, Earl Rhodes, 36, a cameraman and Robert Gibson, 70, a retired osteopath. Supporters were expected to mount a protest outside the Chinese Consulate in Edinburgh today.

Miss Katzen, 42, is a former housing benefits officer with Edinburgh City Council. She moved to Leicester in 1999 but maintains contact with other Falun Gong practitioners in the Capital.

Her close friend Simon Miller, 41, of Bruntsfield, today protested against the "brutal" treatment meted out by the Chinese authorities.

Falun Gong also said police "violently kicked" some of the protesters in the square.

The movement [...] drew tens of millions of followers in the mid-1990s as China underwent massive economic and social change.

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Thousands of Chinese members have been imprisoned, and Falun Gong supporters abroad say 358 of them have been killed in captivity.

Edinburgh practitioners have protested before about the persecution.

Their information today was that about 50 police broke into the European demonstrators'' hotel rooms at about 10pm last night British time. Miss Katzen was grabbed by two officers and dragged away.

She and the other Britons are understood to have been taken to a police station before being put on a plane to London Heathrow. They were due to touch down at about 3.45pm today.

Mr Miller, a housing official who got involved with Falun Gong after going to classes in Edinburgh, said: "Rosemary has a big clump of hair missing. The brutality of this is outrageous, but hopefully it will put some international spotlight on what''s going on in China and lead to some improvement in the situation.

"Falun Gong is an entirely peaceful traditional Chinese exercise system. The Chinese government fabricates malicious propaganda against it."

He had not yet spoken to Miss Katzen and was waiting to hear if she had suffered any other injuries. But he added: "She''s a very strong person and I''m sure she''ll just shrug this off."

New York-based Falun Gong activists said between 50 and 100 members from western countries had planned to demonstrate in the square, scene of mass student protests in the past, to mark Chinese New Year.

Three or four small groups unfurled banners, but were chased by police "who were very brutal - there was a lot of violent kicking", the movement claimed.

The protest forced police to briefly clear tourists from the centre of the square, one of China''s most important public monuments.

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