Published Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

New York Times

BEIJING -- A New York-based member of the Falun Gong spiritual movement has been sentenced to three years in prison by a Chinese court after being charged with giving sensitive information to foreigners, a senior U.S. diplomat said Tuesday.

The member, Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen with permanent-resident status in the United States, came to China early this year to gather information on the Chinese government's crackdown on Falun Gong, which has been banned here for almost 18 months.

Her indictment accused her of providing foreign journalists with photographs of Falun Gong practitioners detained in a psychiatric hospital, according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Hong Kong-based group. She also gave foreign reporters advance notice of demonstrations by the group, the indictment charged.

For the past year, small groups of practitioners have staged silent protests at Tiananmen Square almost daily, unfurling banners or beginning their meditation exercises. They are quickly whisked away into waiting vans by the dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police officers who patrol the square.

On significant dates, like the anniversary of the start of the crackdown and the birthday of the group's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi, the protests have been larger and hundreds of people have been detained.

A number of overseas practitioners of Falun Gong have entered China, either to join the demonstrations or to show their support for Chinese members. And a number have been detained.

But until recently such people have been quickly released and sent back to the United States. Teng is the first foreign-based Falun Gong member to be put on trial. Teng, an acupuncturist, is married to a U.S. citizen and has a U.S. green card.

Although U.S. embassies do not automatically give green-card holders the same degree of help as U.S. citizens, the U.S. diplomat said the embassy in Beijing had discussed her case with Chinese officials several times before the verdict and would continue to raise her case. He said the U.S. government had hoped for a ``benign outcome to the trial, and if not that then a speedy return of Teng to the United States.''

Teng, who was jailed in March and later charged with ``releasing national security information to foreigners,'' could have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. She was tried Nov. 23 in a closed hearing at the Beijing Intermediate People's Court.

Hundreds of Chinese Falun Gong members have been sentenced to long prison terms. Thousands more have been placed in lesser forms of detention, like labor camps, which do not require a trial, human rights groups say.

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