AFP: Falun Gong Family From France Seized During Visit to China, Report Says

August 27, 2001

BEIJING, Aug 27, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) A Chinese couple and their young daughter based in France, all members of the Falun Gong movement, have been detained while visiting relatives in China, the spiritual group said Monday.

Chi Jian, a Ph.D. student of economics at the Second University of the City of Grenoble, his wife Sun Fenglong and their daughter Chi Yifan, all of whom hold French residency, were seized in a raid August 7, the Falun Dafa Information Center said.

While the three were spending time in north China's Inner Mongolia region, public security agents stormed their house and "kidnapped" them, a statement issued by the center said.

No one has seen or heard from them since, and faculty and students at Chi's university have launched a campaign for their release, while the French government reportedly has begun an investigation, the statement added.

Police officials of the Inner Mongolia region contacted by AFP declined to comment on the report.

"I can't tell you anything about this case," a spokesman for the region's police department said by telephone.

The Chinese government has a previous record of detaining overseas nationals or residents when they came back to China to visit relatives, the Falun Gong information center said.

"The fact that they are targeting children and families clearly demonstrates how desperate the supporters of (Chinese President) Jiang Zemin's brutal policies have become," Adam Montanaro, spokesman for the center, said in the statement.

The center referred to the case of Teng Chunyan, a U.S. resident and Falun Gong member, who was sentenced in 2000 to three years in prison for exposing the detention of Falun Gong practitioners in mental hospitals.

The 37-year-old acupuncturist from New York was accused of leading foreign journalists to a village in the Fangshan district of Beijing to interview Falun Gong adherents who had been detained in a mental hospital.

[...]

Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of Falun Gong followers have been sentenced to jail terms and tens of thousands sent to labor camps, while more than

100 are reported to have died in police detention.

http://www.europeaninternet.com/china/news.php3?id=616828^oion=default

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