The Daily Telegraph(Sydney): Australian Couple Tell of 15-Hour Beijing Ordeal

March 13, 2002

AN Australian couple arrested in Beijing for supporting the outlawed Falun Gong movement yesterday said they were pushed, kicked, threatened and strip-searched by police during a 15-hour ordeal.

Jarrod Hall, 23, and his wife Emma Hall, 22, said they used wedding gift money for a two-day trip to China last week to unfurl a Falun Gong banner in Tiananmen Square in Beijing before being arrested, interrogated and expelled from the country yesterday. Speaking outside the Chinese Consulate in Melbourne, they said hundreds of their fellow Falun Gong meditation practitioners in China were being killed by authorities.

"People are being put in prison and tortured," Mr Hall said.

"They are being put in prison indefinitely with no trial just for standing up for those principles.

"Could you stand by and watch people being killed and tortured for doing something that you believe is good for you, is good for them and is good for everyone else on the planet?"

The arrest of the Halls came just days after 10 other Australians returned home after being expelled from China for also unfurling a Falun Gong banner in Tiananmen Square.

"We were kidnapped, that's how I see it," Mr Hall said. "If we didn't do what we were told, they would scream in our faces."

He said they were later taken to another building where they were questioned separately.

"I was thrown to the floor several times for not standing where I was told to stand and sitting in a meditation position."