Mon. Feb. 11 2002áá
A Canadian has been detained in China after staging a protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square with an American citizen on Monday. The men are followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Canadian citizen Jason Loftus and U.S. citizen Levi Browde unfurled a yellow banner that read: "The self-immolations were a fraud. Falun Gong is good." The men also shouted pro-Falun Gong slogans on the plaza.
Loftus, a 22-year-old engineering student from Barrie, Ontario, struggled with police as he was led away. It is not immediately clear how police will deal with the two men. Recently, another Canadian protester was detained and released by Chinese authorities.
Monday's protest took place on the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Last year, five [people], including a 12-year-old girl and her mother, set themselves ablaze in the square on the same date. The girl and her mother later died.
Falun Gong has denied any involvement in the incident and the men arrested on Monday showed reporters a film analyzing inconsistencies in Chinese media reports. The protesters said the incident had been staged as part of a smear campaign.
"We are here to expose the fabrication of lies behind the self-immolation," said Browde, who works for a Wall Street software firm and began practising Falun Gong in 1999.
"I am here because the persecution of Falun Gong has been horrific in many aspects but in particular, the propaganda spread by state media here in China has polluted not only the minds of people in China but those abroad."
Loftus said he began practising Falun Gong after hearing about it at a health show in Canada more than three years ago. [...]
"I came to China to give a voice to Falun Gong practitioners but I've also come for the people of China," said Loftus, an engineering student at Toronto University.
"We're not against China. We're here for the people of China because this persecution is serving only one person in this whole country -- that's the president of China, Jiang Zemin."á
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