AP: Canadian Detained in [Group] Protest

By TOM COHEN, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday January 23 2:14 PM ET

TORONTO (AP) - A Canadian woman detained in China for promoting Falun Gong turned to the movement in 1998 after years of depression over the death of one of her children, her son said.

Joel Chipkar said Canada's foreign affairs department confirmed that his mother, Connie Chipkar, 61, was taken into custody in Beijing on Wednesday and that she would have a preliminary hearing Thursday.

Chipkar said his mother told him by telephone on Tuesday that she had arrived in China and intended to try to tell as many people as possible that Falun Gong was good.

"She said she was going to Tiananmen Square and if I didn't hear from her by 2 a.m., then something had happened,'' Chipkar, who runs a real estate business in the Toronto area, said in a telephone interview.

On Wednesday, his mother was identified as the woman who stood in Tiananmen Square wearing a sash emblazoned with the words: ''Falun Gong'' and ''SOS,'' to protest a 1999 ban on the movement. As Chinese tourists watched, she sang and held out her arms before officers put her in a police van and drove away.

[...]

Connie Chipkar had struggled with depression since the death of a 9-year-old son from brain cancer years ago, Joel Chipkar said.

"She reeled with that depression and pain for many, many years,'' he said. "When she started to practice Falun Gong, I saw her face just lift and she became very, very peaceful and compassionate.''

Joel Chipkar, 33, said he began following Falun Gong practices himself after seeing how it helped his mother, a former teacher from Welland, Ontario, who learned of the group in Toronto in 1998.

He took part in a November protest on Tiananmen Square against Beijing's treatment of Falun Gong followers. It was the first Falun Gong demonstration on the square to involve Westerners exclusively.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020123/wl/china_banned_sect_1.html

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