By Bruce Finley
Denver Post International Affairs Writer

Dec. 17 - A suburban Denver woman detained in China for protesting China's ban on the Falun Gong spiritual movement spoke out Thursday against
captors who she said tortured her by pumping her stomach full of saltwater.

The trouble began when Jian Tang and other prisoners launched a hunger strike, said Tang, who is now home in Highlands Ranch after returning to Colorado on Wednesday night.

After two days of refusing all food and water, Tang said, she was moved away from other Falun Gong detainees to another cell in a Guangzhou detention facility.

There, a guard approached and asked her to eat.

"I said: "No.' I told him I wanted him to give me a reason why I was arrested and that I wanted to see an arrest notice,'' Tang said. "I told him: "We did not commit any crime.' He got angry. He shouted: "Who do you think you are?' After that he kicked me. He walked close to me and lifted his foot and kicked me. My body just moved a little. I was still sitting. Then he said if I refused to eat they would feed me saltwater.''

A few minutes later, Tang said, "four or five big men put me on the floor'' and chained her legs together. She felt a hand over her nose,she said, forcing her to open her mouth to breathe. One of the men jammed what she described as a semi-transparent plastic tube into her mouth. "I could see a big thing on my mouth.''

She felt fluid - "salt with just a little water added'' - pouring down her throat. She said it continued for three or four minutes.

"I thought I was dying. I couldn't breathe. After that, my stomach hurt. I keep drinking water . . . I could not think. I threw up all over my body.. . . I kept throwing out the whole night.''

Tang said this kind of treatment - evidence she says that Chinese officials disregard human rights and "just do what they want'' - ought to be forbidden.

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment.

Tang's husband's parents still live in China; her parents and brother are in the United States. Tang said she weighed risks of speaking out very carefully.

"I think I should tell the truth,'' she said, "for the sake of other (Falun Gong) practitioners still in jail.'' She said she heard other detainees received harsh treatment, but did not witness any.

Tang said she was freed after 15 days in police custody. U.S. Sen.Wayne Allard had intervened, asking U.S. consular officials to inquire about her in Guangzhou. Police detained Tang and other practitioners on Nov. 25 in Guangzhou, where they'd gathered to defy China's ban.

Chinese authorities are adamantly opposed to the popular Falun Gong spiritual movement, which blends slow-motion meditative exercise with eastern religious ideas.

They banned the movement in April - after thousands of practitioners surrounded government headquarters in Beijing near Tiananmen Square. Chinese officials in Washington say Falun Gong is not only illegal but dangerous and a threat to government power.

Tang was among thousands caught in a massive crackdown that Chinese officials say has involved more than 35,000 police run-ins with protesters.

After lengthy interrogations about Falun Gong activities, she said, Guangzhou detention center officials said they were sending her back to Chengdu, her hometown in China. She moved to the United States in 1991to earn a physics doctorate at the Colorado School of Mines - and stayed in Colorado with her husband and daughter.

On the way to Chengdu, when she didn't have money for her airplane ticket, she said, police escorts guided her to a bank and told her to withdraw money with her Visa card. Tang said she withdrew the equivalent of about $120 and made the flight.

In Chengdu, local police questioned her further and, after two days, released her to her husband's parents. From there, she returned home via Beijing, arriving in Denver Wednesday night.

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