Ottawa Citizen: China says Falun Gong stage mass suicide but [group] alleges torture killings

Wednesday July 04, 2001

BEIJING (CP) - Fourteen followers of the banned Falun Gong [group] died in a Chinese labour camp, the government said Wednesday. It and a Hong Kong-based rights group termed the deaths mass suicide, but the [group] said the prisoners were tortured to death.

[...]

Falun Gong, however, blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday that at least 15 women followers were tortured to death on or around June 20. The [group] disputed the official claim of a mass suicide, saying the victims were watched around the clock.

"There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find anything to hang themselves," said Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong.

In Canada, Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside the Chinese Embassy and consulates across the country on Tuesday to protest the alleged torture deaths at the labour camp.

"People don't know exactly what happened," said Grace Wollensak, an Ottawa-based practitioner who came to Canada from China 11 years ago.

"But at least one body was seen by her family and they saw the wounds and bruises all over her body. In other cases, the families only received the ashes. They didn't let them see the bodies."

The reported suicide at Wanjia would be the most deadly involving Falun Gong practitioners confirmed by the government since it banned the spiritual movement in July 1999.

[...]

The [group] says the government is running a smear campaign against it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in police custody during the crackdown on the group.

It said the Wanjia labour camp used torture to make practitioners renounce Falun Gong. Guards allegedly doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.

In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.

The Chinese government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are mistreated.

http://www.southam.com/ottawacitizen/newsnow/cpfs/world/010704/w070434.html