Thursday January 18 5:24 PM ET

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian Chinese follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement who was released from a labor camp in China last week said on Thursday he had been repeatedly tortured and feared he would die.

Sculpture professor Zhang Kunlun, unexpectedly freed less than two months into a three-year sentence, said police in the eastern province of Shandong tortured him with electric shocks upon his arrest last July.

``They threatened me, (saying) 'If you shout we will shock your mouth'. My arms, legs and body were burned in many spots from the electricity. You could smell the burning skin,'' the soft-spoken 60-year-old told a news conference.

``My left leg was badly injured. I could not walk properly. It took over three months to heal,'' he said. Zhang, who denied Beijing's claim that he had renounced Falun Gong before being freed, said the police had told him they could do what they wanted.

``If you were beaten to death we could simply bury you and tell the outside world you had committed suicide,'' he quoted one officer as telling him.

Zhang's release eased tensions between Ottawa and Beijing less than a month before a major Canadian trade mission is due to tour China.

Canadian Liberal member of Parliament and human rights activist Irwin Cotler said Zhang had been the first Falun Gong adherent holding overseas nationality who had been sent to a labor camp.

Zhang said he had been expecting the worst when he was sent to the camp in mid-November.

``On the way to the labor camp I was already prepared to die there because I had heard that place was vicious...there are practitioners who have died over there,'' he said.

Falun Gong, which combines meditation and breathing exercises with a doctrine loosely rooted in Buddhist and Taoist teachings, was banned by Beijing in July 1999.

Supporters of the movement say 50,000 members have been detained and many sent to labor camps without trial since then. At least 100 followers have died, they said.

Zhang said that conditions in the camp were awful and he reported widespread torture of Falun Gong followers.

``They (the camp officials) beat them. Some were beaten unconscious. They were forced to write letters of confession and to denounce Falun Gong. I saw the injuries from the beating and burns on their bodies,'' he said.

At one point, Zhang said, a camp doctor told him: ``If you continue to practice Falun Gong, you are going to die here.''

Human rights groups say around 90 adherents have died while in detention on mainland China. Authorities acknowledge several deaths in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illnesses.

Ottawa had repeatedly urged Beijing to release Zhang, who was rearrested in Shandong in October after entering the country on his Chinese passport.

Zhang, who teaches in Shandong, emigrated to Canada in 1989 and became a Canadian national in 1995, while retaining his Chinese nationality. With his Chinese papers, he returned to China in 1996 to continue his teaching career.

His release prompted sighs of relief in Ottawa, which is sending a major trade mission to China from Feb. 9-18, led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

Cotler said the mission should still go ahead but urged Ottawa which prefers to engage rather than chastise Beijing -- to effectively link trade with human rights.

``This mission cannot simply be business and usual. It has to be a trade and human rights mission...one cannot trade with another country that is engaged in the violation of human rights and be silent,'' he said.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010118/wl/canada_china_dc_1.html