Tuesday, 13-Aug-2002 Story from AFP

PHNOM PENH, Aug 13 (AFP) - China's outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong said Tuesday that Cambodia had violated United Nations refugee laws and deported two of its members back to China.

A statement issued by the Falun Dafa Information Centre (FDIC) in New York said Li Guojun and his wife Zhang Xinyi were deported although they lived in Phnom Penh with UN refugee certificates.

It quoted sources as saying the deportations followed pressure from the Chinese embassy and the couple were being held at a detention centre in Changsha, the capital of China's Hunan province.

The pair had escaped from China to Cambodia after Beijing launched a crackdown on Falun Gong in July 1999, it said.

"This is a blatant and direct violation of their official status as UN refugees," FDIC spokesperson Erping Zhang said. "We call on the UN to take immediate action to protect those to who it has granted refugee status."

A representative of the UN human rights office here said UN rights workers were attempting to verify the claim. Government representatives of the interior and immigration ministries said they were not aware of the Falun Gong members. If confirmed, the deportation would follow similar claims by the International Buddhist Information Bureau which this month said a Vietnamese dissident monk had been kidnapped on Cambodian soil and forcibly repatriated.

Thich Tri Luc, 45, of the outlawed Vien Hoa Dao Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam lived here and went missing despite being granted protection by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on June 28.

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