Monday February 18, 2002
The British pupil roughed up and deported from Beijing revealed yesterday how he dodged police for two days before unfurling a home-made protest banner at the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Alex Rostron, 18, was the only one of five British supporters of the persecuted Falun Gong movement who slipped through security to stage a brief demonstration. He had borrowed half his 460 air fare to make the half-term journey to Beijing.
Bruised and tired after the 12-hour deportation flight, he described how police arrested the other protesters, including a retired osteopath and a BBC cameraman, after finding banners and leaflets in their luggage at a Beijing youth hostel.
"They ordered me to go to a hotel at the airport, but I slipped away with an experienced backpacker who got me to another hostel," said the sixth-former. "I'd only got the one banner which I kept in my pocket. They didn't find it, even when a policeman tailed me around Tiananmen Square.
"I got as far as the metal detector at the second gate of the Forbidden City, where I was obviously going to get frisked. I ran down the steps, pulled my banner out and started shouting 'Falun Gong is good'. There was amazed silence from crowds of Chinese, then six police were on me and a woman was sent flying."
Mr Rostron, who plans a gap year before studying graphic design at university, said he was terrified but calm as he twice escaped from disorganised captors. He said: "I used Falun Gong self-discipline - no resistance, but persist with what you've decided to do.
"I wriggled out of my coat, pulled the banner through the sleeve and shouted the slogan again until they choked me."
He was threatened with a kicking, he said, and twice yanked by his hair for police photographs. Other deported westerners told him they were given bloody noses and hauled into police trucks in Tiananmen Square after shouting Falun Gong's slogan "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance " at Chinese new year crowds.
Near his return, the attitude softened somewhat. "Before our flight the police brought us loads of delicious food but they had a TV cameraman with them, presumably to pretend they were treating us really well, so no one touched the stuff," Mr Rostron said.
The Chinese government tolerated the movement for seven years until its appeal - said to outnumber the Communist party, with an estimated 70m followers - led to a ban in 1999 and repression. Falun Gong alleges 350 members have been murdered and 20,000 sent to labour camps, prompting protest "raids" on Beijing by its supporters.
This morning Mr Rostron will be back at Leeds grammar school, updating the Falun Gong Society noticeboard. His mother, Gaydor Kaye, said: "I couldn't have stopped him, even if I'd torn his passport in two. He'd still have gone because he's doing what he believes is right."
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Ms Kaye said: "As far as we're concerned, it's had an excellent effect on his schoolwork and whole attitude. How many teenagers have the self-discipline to get up early three times a week to do an hour of exercises in the park?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,652016,00.html