Sunday, 14 January, 2001, 10:23 GMT

The conference heard personal accounts of ill-treatment

A big conference of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in Hong Kong has bitterly criticized China's top leader for the campaign of suppression against it. About 1,000 members from around the world heard harrowing allegations of persecution on mainland China and called on President Jiang Zemin to halt the crackdown.

"There are evils which should not exist in this cosmos" Letter from China

They were meeting in Hong Kong's city hall, taking advantage of the former colony's autonomy to defy the ban on the movement in the rest of China.

Practitioners say China has tortured 120 followers to death while in custody. Chinese authorities have acknowledged several deaths in custody but say most were suicides or the result of illness.

A personal account of ill-treatment was given to the conference in the form of a letter, because the member - whose name and identity were kept secret - was unable to travel to Hong Kong.

Members presented a petition to Beijing's office in Hong Kong

The letter spoke of detention and torture at the hands of the Chinese authorities.

While the movement is legal in Hong Kong, the organisers have complained that a dozen people trying to attend the conference were detained by immigration officers at the airport.

Some, they said, were holders of Chinese passports and one was an Australian citizen who had come to talk about her experiences of being jailed in Beijing.

The group said it believed the detentions were made because of pressure from the central government. Hong Kong's immigration authorities refused to discuss individual cases.

...... (CCP's slanders omitted ?editor)

Wreaths and placards

On Saturday, around 800 Falun Gong [practitioners] performed exercises in a public park in Hong Kong, forming their bodies into the Chinese characters for "truthfulness", "benevolence" and "tolerance".

Others stood in the city centre carrying placards with the names of the 22 countries they represented.

The movement, loosely based on Taoist and Buddhist doctrine, teaches meditation and exercise. It is also known as Falun Dafa.

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