Group: Falun Gong Man Sentenced

BEIJING (AP) - A university classmate of China's vice president has been sentenced to two years in a labor camp for his involvement with the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, a human rights group reported Thursday.

Zhang Mengye, an assistant professor at an engineering school in the southern province of Guangdong, was arrested in Beijing in January, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

It said that at the time of his arrest Zhang was visiting Beijing, hoping to appeal to his former classmate, Vice President Hu Jintao, for an end to the government's crackdown on Falun Gong, which was banned last July.

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According to officials at Zhang's school, his sentence to labor re-education indicates he has been deemed a ``backbone element,'' or organizer, within Falun Gong, the Information Center said.

Falun Gong claims members within the Communist Party, army and academic community. The widely popular movement, which Chinese leaders fear is a threat to Communist Party rule, has proved difficult to eradicate despite a massive eradication campaign and jail sentences of up to 18 years for people accused of being key organizers.

Both Zhang and Hu entered the Water Conservancy Department of Beijing's elite Qinghua University in 1959, the Information Center said. Hu, 57, is the youngest among the Communist Party's inner circle and is considered the most likely candidate to succeed President Jiang Zemin when he steps down in 2003.

In a related development, the Information Center said police in the southern city of Shenzhen were holding in custody one Hong Kong member of Falun Gong and three members holding Australian passports. The four were among seven people seized on March 4 by police in Shenzhen, a boomtown just across the border from Hong Kong.

Unknown numbers of Falun Gong members holding foreign passports have traveled to China since the government ban was announced in July. Some have been arrested after attempting to protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square or elsewhere. Most have since been deported.