AFP: Falun Gong Follower Prepared To Defend Group to the End

BEIJING, Oct 1 (AFP) - A 28 year-old Chinese lawyer vowed Sunday to continue to protest the Falun Gong ban, despite being arrested four times in the last year for his allegiance to the outlawed group. "I am not afraid. I know that if they arrest me I will spend two or three years in a re-education through labor camp, but it is absolutely necessary to protest to show that we are not bad," the lawyer, who called himself Zak, told AFP. Zak was detained Sunday in Beijing's Tiananmen Square along with some 1,000 members of the Buddhist-inspired group, but escaped when fellow adherents stormed the police van he was in releasing him into the National Day crowds. First arrested in August 1999, just after the group was outlawed as an "illegal organization," Zak said the government had recently set up two detention camps solely for Falun Gong followers in northwest and northeast China capable of holding up to 50,000 people each. Many Falun Gong followers were now incarcerated with ordinary criminals, he said, adding that police routinely beat followers as a method to crack down on the group. "I'm bigger than most so they hit me harder, but this has not been very serious. I'm in good health," he said. Following his first arrest, Zak lost his job as a lawyer and has had to change jobs after each subsequent arrest. Zak works as a consultant in a state-run enterprise in the northeast city of Dalian now, but his boss only agreed to employ him on condition that he remains silent over his spiritual beliefs. "I remain a lawyer in my soul. I know Chinese law and I know that what the government is doing is illegal," he said. "That is why we have come to Tiananmen Square to protest, the world should see how they beat us and how we do not fight back." Meanwhile, the government has openly called the group the biggest threat to one party communist rule since 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests were violently quelled by People's Liberation Army troops. Zak said he arrived in Beijing Saturday for the October 1st National Day protests by taking a string of local buses and slowly making his way to the capital. "Planes and trains are being watched closely, so we got here by leap-frogging from bus to bus," he said. He said the protests are expected to continue throughout the seven-day national holiday and until the communist government ends its persecution of the spiritual group. "I hope this will be soon. Everyone sees that the repression is unjust and are turning against the government," he said.

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