August 27, 2002, Tuesday

Hong Kong officials have been accused of trying to ban a brochure from an art exhibition because it contained the work of a Falun Gong member, a news report said Tuesday.

Australian Chinese artist Zhang Cuiying, jailed for eight months in China for being a Falun Gong member in 2000, was refused entry to Hong Kong without explanation for the exhibition, which ran from Friday to Monday.

Organisers were then allegedly told by officials not to give out the catalogue featuring her work at the exhibition in the government-owned venue City Hall [...]. Exhibition organisers ignored the instruction and handed out Zhang's brochure, which contains information about Falun Gong and details of her arrest and imprisonment, the South China Morning Post reported.

Amy Chu, one of the organisers, said she had received two verbal and two written warnings from officials saying they might be banned from future bookings of the venue if they continued to give out the brochures.

She also complained that police had visited the exhibition three times over the weekend, causing a "nuisance" to the exhibition and unsettling members of the public.

[...]

Falun Gong is banned [...]" in mainland China, but members are free to practice in Hong Kong under the "one country, two systems" arrangement that guarantees people in the territory freedom of expression.

Members claim the Hong Kong government is taking an increasingly hardline against them, however. Earlier this month, 16 members were fined for obstruction over a demonstration they staged in March in [a politically motivated trial] that attracted international attention.