Saturday, January 15, 2000
Ex-general jailed for 17
years over Falun Gong, says rights group
REUTERS
A retired air force general has been jailed for 17 years at a secret
court-martial for links to the outlawed Falun Gong, a Hong
Kong-based human rights group said yesterday.
The sentence imposed on 74-year-old Yu Changxin on January 6 was
among the harshest in cases on the movement and angered many retired
generals, said the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic
Movement in China.
Yu, a retired lieutenant-general who held a rank equivalent to a
provincial governor or a cabinet minister, is the most senior of
about a dozen people jailed for links to the movement, banned as an
"evil cult" last year.
About 300 Falun Gong leaders faced trial, while another 5,000 had
been sent to labour camps to undergo "re-education", administrative
punishment that required no judicial process, the centre said.
Several foreign members had been expelled.
Yu, a former ace who went on to train air force pilots, was
expected to appeal, the centre said.
He had close ties with many retired air force generals who were
disgruntled with the harsh sentence, it said in a statement. Many
active generals were his former students. "It has gone too far," an
unidentified general was quoted as saying.
The centre said the authorities suspected Yu of masterminding a
10,000-strong peaceful protest outside Beijing's Zhongnanhai
leadership compound last April that shocked the authorities and led
to the ban.
The centre claimed that Yu had nothing to do with the April
protest, but was arrested in July and convicted on orders from
President Jiang Zemin.
The Air Force Command Academy professor was accused of helping
the group expand and held responsible for the deaths of
practitioners who refused medical help when ill.
Falun Gong mixes Buddhism, Taoism, meditation and breathing
exercises. |