Tuesday, 12 December, 2000

Mrs Teng was documenting the Falun Gong crackdown

China has jailed a US [permanent resident] for three years on spying charges for exposing the detention of members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group in mental hospitals.

Teng Chunyan, a 37-year-old female acupuncturist, is the first overseas member of the Falun Gong to be tried in China, and only the second US green card holder.

According to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and

Democracy, Mrs Teng was accused of stealing, prying into, buying and illegally supplying state intelligence.

The US State Department described the three-hour, closed-door trial at Beijing's Intermediate Court as "deeply disturbing" and has called for her immediate release.

Meeting

Prosecutors said that she had taken foreign reporters to meet the group members, who were being held in a village in the Fangshan district of the capital, in February.

[Allegation] say the authorities

A month later she returned to Fangshan and provided a digital camera for a man to take pictures of the prisoners, some of whom were on hunger strike.

These images were then allegedly forwarded to foreign news organizations via

e-mail.

Although a Chinese national, Mrs Teng, an acupuncturist, emigrated to the US

eight years ago.

Falun Gong crackdown

She is married to a US citizen, but returned to China recently to document the authorities' crackdown on the Falun Gong.

Thousands of Falun Gong members have been arrested

The authorities have been waging a national campaign against the movement,

which it describes as an [xxx], since July 1999.

Since then, Falun Gong leaders have been given jail terms of up to 18 years. Tens of thousands of it members have been also been detained, jailed or sent to labour camps.

Human rights groups belief the government may be trying to make an example of Mrs Teng to deter other foreign Falun Gong practitioners and activists from coming to China.

But the government's increasingly harsh measures have failed to stamp out the movement, and members continue to protest in Beijing on an almost daily basis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1066000/1066604.stm

Category: Falun Dafa in the Media