Thursday February 14, 2002

A Midhurst man who was nose-to-nose with Chinese police in Beijing's Tiananmen Square earlier this week is back home after spending 27 hours in custody.

Falun Gong activist Jason Loftus, 22, of Midhurst, and an American man were detained by authorities on Monday after suggesting Chinese officials had staged a January, 2001 public suicide.

According to authorities, two people died in that self-immolation incident when five people set themselves on fire. The government has blamed the horrifying spectacle on practitioners of Falun Gong. [...]

"The efforts to expose the reality behind the self-immolation is more than just trying to bring the name back for Falun Gong and restore its reputation---it's much more serious than that," Loftus said from his parent's home in Midhurst Wednesday.

"This propaganda is being used to manipulate an entire nation to basically hate all Falun Gong practitioners. All the newspapers, all the television and radio stations are pumping propaganda like this," he added.

His time in custody after being removed from Tiananmen Square was not a pleasant one.

"I was fed one meal and I was denied water for a day. I was beaten, I had my hair pulled, I was choked, I was yelled at and I was interrogated -- I was locked up in a cell for about 20 hours. It was extremely filthy," he said.

He did not require medical attention.

"For a little while when I was in there and I didn't know what would happen to me - I could feel just a small taste of what those Falun Gong practitioners in China face," said Loftus.

He claims the Chinese government is persecuting followers, something human rights groups have been stating for the last two years.

"It's basically common knowledge among all the police officers that Falun Gong practitioners have no rights," he said.

"We wanted the Chinese people to know the truth so they won't be deceived into participating in these persecutions," he added.

"China should come to know that if it's going to participate on the large world stage, they should also meet the basic standards of human rights."

Last week, Liu Qi, mayor of Beijing and president of the Beijing Olympic Committee, was named in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for his responsibility in overseeing severe human rights abuses against Chinese and international Falun Gong practitioners.