February 21, 2002

BEIJING (Reuters) - Fifteen U.S.-based scientists with ties to Beijing's famed Tsinghua University have petitioned President Bush, due to speak there on Friday, on behalf of jailed members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.

The group called China's most prestigious institution of scientific learning a ''bastion of intolerance, injustice and persecution'' for collaborating in a government crackdown on campus, the New York-based Falun Dafa Information Center said.

China has imprisoned, detained or sent to labor camps more than 300 Tsinghua students and faculty, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

''One by one practitioners have disappeared there, some to gulags, some to jails,'' Falun Dafa quoted University of Pennsylvania professor and Tsinghua alumnus Shiyu Zhou as saying in the letter addressed to Bush.

China's heir apparent Hu Jintao, a Tsinghua alumnus, was expected to meet Bush before his speech and introduce him.

The scientists' letter raised the cases of six students, arrested for posting articles on Falun Gong on the Internet, whose sentencing China postponed ahead of Bush's visit.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20020221/wl/rights_china_dc_1.html

Posting date: 2/23/2002
Original article date: 2/21/2002
Category: News & Media Reports

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