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China jails falun gong member for nine years Another adherent held in psychiatric hospital MIRO CERNETIG
Beijing -- China's crackdown on falun gong continued yesterday: One of the movement's leaders was sentenced to nine years in jail and a judge linked to the quasi-spiritual sect remained in detention, a Hong Kong human rights group reported. Gao Qiuju, leader of the falun gong branch in the northeastern city of Dalian, was sentenced to nine years for "using an evil cult to disturb public order in society," according to the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The 59-year-old businesswoman, who took part in a peaceful protest of 10,000 fellow adherents in Beijing last April 25, was also convicted of leaking state secrets, the group said. The protest, staged outside Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Communist leadership, was meant to force the regime to give official recognition to falun gong, whose practitioners follow a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and New-Age apocalyptic prophecies. The Hong-Kong-based information centre also released a statement saying Huang Jinchun, a judge in southern China, is being held in the Longqianshan Psychiatric Hospital in Guangxi province in the south. It said "medical personnel gave him daily injections of a narcotic that left him sleepy and muddled" because he would not renounce his loyalty to falun gong. "The doctors and nurses made fun of me: 'Aren't you practising falun gong? Let us see which is stronger, falun gong or our medicines," Mr. Huang is said to have written in an appeal that was posted on the movement's Web site. Because he is in custody, there is no way of knowing if, or how, he conveyed those comments. The detention of Mr. Huang, along with recent arrests of Communist officials and military personnel, is a sign that falun gong's appeal has penetrated to the upper levels of Chinese society. China's leadership is worried that the movement, whose members number in the millions, could become a challenge to the Party's own supremacy within official ranks. The Hong-Kong-based rights group estimates that as many as 5,000 adherents have been jailed since the movement came to the authorities' attention after its April protest. Beijing has labelled it a criminal cult that must be crushed. |
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