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AFP: Falun Gong [practitioner] says husband taken hostage by China Friday November 1, 2002 A Falun Gong practitioner claims that her husband has been taken hostage by
Beijing police after she filed a lawsuit against China's leadership for human
rights abuses. Chinese asylum seeker Jennifer Zheng Zeng, 36, who lives in Melbourne with
fellow Falun Gong [practitioners], said Friday she feared for the safety of her
husband Cao Jianwei whose whereabouts were unknown. She believed his arrest was related to her legal action against Chinese
President Jiang Zemin because her husband is not a Falun Gong practitioner. "I can't imagine any other reason for his arrest except to keep him as a
hostage to threaten me," she said. China, [...] has jailed or sent to labor camps tens of thousands of adherents
since it banned the movement in July 1999. On October 21, Zeng was one of seven plaintiffs from six countries who filed
a lawsuit with the UN committees on torture and human rights which was timed to
coincide with Jiang's visit to the United States. Another lawsuit was filed against Jiang by Falun Gong supporters in the US
Federal courts during his visit. Mrs. Zeng's nine-year-old daughter had been staying with elderly grandparents
after police raided the couple's home on October 25, taking computers and
arresting her 40-year-old husband. The couple's friends in Beijing had been unable to locate Cao, a former
manager of a Beijing University education investment company. Mrs. Zeng heard of her husband's arrest through her parents-in-law. "The police didn't tell them where he was taken to or on what ground he was
arrested," she said. "We have no information about where he was detained and why
he was taken away." The couple came to Australia on a business trip in September last year. Zeng's husband returned while she stayed behind, seeking refugee status
because she feared she would be imprisoned for being a Falun Gong [practitioner]
if she went back to China. In June, 2000, she was sentenced without trial to one year in a forced labour
camp where she said she was subjected to shock treatment and worked 21 hours a
day making toy rabbits [...] . http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021101/1/34bta.html Posting date: 11/2/2002 |