Ms Zhang Xueling Sentenced to Labor Camp After Being Featured In A Prize-Winning Series on Falun Gong

Hong Kong (Wednesday, May 9, 2001) -- Zhang Xueling, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested in eastern China's Weifang city on April 24, less than a week after Ian Johnson of The Wall Street Journal was awarded a joint Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported. Zhang, 33, and her late mother Chen Zixiu, who was beaten to death by Weifang police in February 2000, are Falun Gong practitioners. Last year, Johnson interviewed Zhang and detailed her mother's death in a prize-winning series. Zhang was sentenced to a three-year term in a labor camp and sent to the Wangcun Labor Camp in Shandong province, where about 400 Falun Gong followers have been locked up, the Hong Kong-based center said. It was not clear whether her arrest and sentencing this time were related to the Pulitzer, the center said. Report from Free Asia Radio (May 9, 2001) [Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2001/5/10/10866.html]