OTTAWA, Jan 15 (Reuters) - A Canadian Chinese [practitioner] of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement who was released from a labor camp last week returned to Canada on Monday, officials said.
A Canadian foreign ministry spokeswoman said 60-year-old professor Zhang Kunlun -- freed after serving less than two months of a three-year sentence -- had arrived back in Canada from Beijing.
Falun Gong members said Zhang would make a brief stopover at Vancouver airport before arriving in Ottawa at about 11.45 p.m. (0445 GMT) on Monday. They said Zhang was exhausted and would not be speaking to the media.
Zhang was unexpectedly set free last Wednesday in a clear bid by Beijing to ease tensions before a major Canadian trade mission to China next month.
The professor of sculpture was arrested in Shandong in October after entering China on his Chinese passport and received a three-year labor camp sentence in mid-November.
China considers Falun Gong -- which combines meditation and breathing exercises with a doctrine loosely rooted in Buddhist and Taoist teachings ?[...] and has pulled few punches to crush the movement since banning it in 1999.
17:37 01-15-01
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Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
