Feb. 16, 2002

Two Falun Gong followers from Charlotte returned home Friday after a landmark protest in China that they said ended in violence.

Joanna Kao, 40, was arrested in Tiananmen Square and said police manhandled her. Magnus Lee, 21, a junior at UNC Charlotte, said he saw police chase, drag and hit protesters.

"We kept asking the police what did we do wrong," Kao said by phone after landing at the Raleigh airport. "Why did you hit us?"

Chinese authorities said Friday they had detained 59 people after the largest demonstration yet by foreign members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. They expelled 33 Americans, according to the U.S. Embassy, including Kao, Lee and four others from North Carolina.

Many of the returning Americans displayed bruises, cuts and scrapes. Some were not wearing shoes.

Lee said police confiscated $1,000 and a Palm Pilot from Thai Ton, a Durham follower, but foreign believers are not treated as harshly as the Chinese.

"Since the persecution began," he said of the government crackdown, "any measures are not too extreme."

The protest was intended to dramatize the harsh persecution of Chinese believers of Falun Gong, a formerly popular meditation and spiritual movement that was outlawed by China in 1999 as an "evil cult."

Kao, who owns a Chinese restaurant in Charlotte, said the foreign believers used banners and shouts Thursday to spread their message: "Falun Dafa (another term for Falun Gong) is good."

Authorities must have learned of the protest, she said, because there were 10 times the number of policemen in Tiananmen Square as there had been earlier in the week.

Just seconds after opening her banner, she said two policemen ripped it away, twisted her hands behind her back, and stuffed her scarf in her mouth to silence her shouts. She said those arrested later practiced their exercises and meditation while being held at the police station, then at the hotel where they were housed before their flight.

Kao is from Taiwan, and though she has lived in Charlotte for 18 years, she said she has "a responsibility to go to China and tell the truth."