August 15, 2002

Concern is growing over the government's treatment of religious groups after two Chinese practitioners of the Falun Gong movement were deported to China despite having UN protection.

The deportations come less than a month after Vietnamese religious dissident Thich Tri Luc, who fled to Cambodia and was given refugee status by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), disappeared in Phnom Penh. It is feared he was returned to the Vietnamese authorities.

Falun Gong members Li Guojun, 46, and his wife Zhang Xinyi, 39, were arrested this month in Phnom Penh, where they had lived since 1999 and taught in a Chinese school.

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UNHCR officials in Cambodia have refused to comment on any of the recent deportations.

But Erping Zhang, spokesman for the New York-based Falun Dafa Information Centre, said the couple were being detained in Hunan province, southern China.

"This is a blatant and direct violation of their official status as United Nations refugees," he said in a statement posted on Monday on the centre's Web site.

"As this moment this couple could be facing severe torture or worse. This is precisely the situation the [UNHCR] was established to prevent. Immediate action is necessary."

The couple were exposed as Falun Gong members when they received a package from a friend containing Falun Gong books and materials, according to the Web site report.

They were fired from their jobs as teachers, and were refused extensions for their passports in June by the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh.

A month later the couple applied for, and received, "person of concern" status from the UNHCR office in Phnom Penh. But they were arrested early this month, according to the centre and police reports.

Police officials did not say what charges were leveled against the couple. The Cambodian human rights group Adhoc has expressed alarm at both the couple's deportation and Thich's disappearance.

Cambodian authorities have a long history of forcibly and illegally deporting dissidents - most notably several members of the anti-Hanoi Free Vietnam movement and more than 500 Montagnard asylum seekers from Vietnam's Central Highlands.

The deportation of the Chinese couple illustrates Cambodia's deep ties with China, which was a strong supporter of the Khmer Rouge regime that left an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians dead in the late 1970s.

China continues to supply this impoverished country with aid and maintains a close relationship with the Cambodian government, marked by numerous visits by senior Chinese officials, including President Jiang Zemin.

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