Chicago Tribune: Falun Gong [group] Rallies in Hong Kong; Beijing Frees Political Prisoner

From Tribune News Services

January 15, 2001

HONG KONG, CHINA -- About 1,200 members of Falun Gong gathered in a government-owned concert hall Sunday to share experiences and to protest the crackdown in China on their spiritual movement, which has been outlawed there since 1999.

Despite fierce opposition from pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, the meeting proceeded without interference. Only a handful of police officers stood outside the meeting site.

While Falun Gong leaders thanked authorities for allowing them to meet, they protested that 11 of their members had been detained at the airport. "We are starting to worry that Hong Kong is no longer safeguarding the rule of law," said Kan Hung-cheung, a group spokesman.

In Beijing, a man sentenced to life in prison in 1989 for defacing the portrait of Mao Tse-tung looming over Tiananmen Square was quietly released on parole last September, Chinese authorities revealed on Friday.

A partner who received a 20-year sentence for the same act of "counterrevolutionary sabotage" will be released two years early, in 2007, because he has repented of his crimes during the ill-fated democracy movement of early 1989, authorities said.

In May 1989, the two men--Yu Zhijian, a teacher, and Yu Dongyue, an art editor at a town newspaper-- traveled to Beijing from Hunan and posted democratic slogans beside the portrait of Mao, then plastered it with eggs and black ink, an audacious act that led to harsh and well-publicized sentences.

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