April 5, 2006 Wednesday

Several Chinese graduate students took to the University of New Mexico campus Tuesday to protest what they say is China's persecution of a meditation-and-exercise group called Falun Gong.

Three students told personal stories of detention by Chinese police and claimed the government is imprisoning, killing and harvesting organs of Falun Gong members.

Lanlan Wang, 30, was teary as she described a close friend in Beijing who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2001 after refusing to renounce Falun Gong.

"I'm sure one of my friends is in the death camp now," she said of her classmate at a university in Beijing.

Wang, a UNM graduate student in electrical engineering, said the Chinese government cracked down on Falun Gong starting in 1999 in response to its growing popularity.

She and two other UNM students decided to speak out after recent news reports that the Chinese government has taken kidneys and other organs of Falun Gong members imprisoned in northeast China.

Jonathan Porter, who heads UNM's Asian Studies program, said reports have been around for years about the government taking organs from executed prisoners, "but I don't know that it has ever been proven."

[...]

The Epoch Times, a New York City-based newspaper that covers international news, ran stories last month about the allegations. [...]

Yule Zhang, 28, said he was jailed for 15 days in 1999 for practicing Falun Gong exercises in a park.

"Some of my friends were arrested several times and sent to a labor camp," the UNM engineering student said.

[...]