Tuesday, May 8, 2001

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, has been urged to seek the release of Falun Gong Trinity College student Zhao Ming, when he visits China later this month .

Mr Jim Dowling, spokesman for the Friends of Zhao Ming (FOZM) group at TCD, told a press conference in Dublin it was lobbying both the Irish and Chinese governments to obtain Mr Zhao's release so he could continue his studies in Ireland.

In March 1999 Mr Zhao was admitted to the computer science department at Trinity College, to study for a master's degree.

With the help of the College Meditation Society he arranged for Falun Gong practice there.

In January of last year, when he went home for the Christmas holidays, he was detained by police after filing a complaint against Chinese government policy on Falun Gong, and placed under house arrest.

The FOZM group has since learned that he has been detained without trial in Tuan He Farm Labour Camp near Beijing since May 2000. "Our latest information is that he has been brutally tortured and forced to renounce his faith," said Mr Dowling.

He presented details from a report sent to the group by Lord Moyne, who has brought the case before the House of Lords in London.

It said it was believed that Mr Zhao will serve at least two years and had been subjected to torture.

"He was forced to sit in a wash basin, head between knees, and then pushed under a bed. When the bed was nudged upwards by his body, the torturers would sit on the bed. He was beaten by more than 10 people, who used wooden batons to strike his ankles and knees, used their knees to knock his body, and hit his ears. Following one such torture, Ming was unable to sit on a toilet for five days and unable to walk normally for two weeks," Mr Dowling said.

Ms Cuiying Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner from Australia, told the press conference how she was arrested twice and jailed for eight months in four prisons in China, where she was stripped, beaten, and had her feet shackled.

Ms Jane Liang from Britain said her Falun Gong sister was serving a two-year sentence in China and was being forced to work up to 16 hours a day.

She had also been handcuffed to the top of a door for three hours with her feet barely touching the ground.

Ms Dai Dongxue, a Falun Gong Dublin-based computer engineer with Microsoft, said she had been arrested when she visited China in December 1999, and that the Chinese embassy in Dublin had refused to renew her passport last February.

Her two sisters and one brother had been detained several times in China because of their beliefs. One sister had been sentenced without trial to a labour camp for three years. Her other sister left home and went into hiding to avoid further arrests and detention.

She said she believed she could face the same torture, labour camp sentence, and other abuses if she could not get her passport or work permit renewed and appealed for help from the Irish Government.

Falun Gong is a spiritual meditation practice that emerged in China in 1992. It has gained popularity as a means of improving health and has become increasingly well known as a result of the Chinese government's actions.

According to human rights groups, over 50,000 practitioners have been arrested and detained without legal representation in China, and at least 190 are said to have died as a result of torture and police brutality.