The Australian embassy in Beijing is trying to locate Sydney Falun Gong
practitioner Nancy Chen, who disappeared in the city of Yibin, Sichuan province,
last Wednesday.
A spokesman said the embassy was concerned for Ms Chen's safety and was in touch
with the Chinese authorities to try to establish her whereabouts and contact
her.
Her husband, Herbert Lu, said in Sydney he had received a phone call early
yesterday from Yibin saying the Public Security Bureau had detained his wife
because she was a Falun Gong practitioner. He said Ms Chen had been held in
Beijing for 24 days in 1999 or 2000 before being deported. He thought his wife
was on a Chinese government blacklist and might have been involved in a protest
in Tiananmen Square but could not remember the details.
He said she had flown to the Sichuan capital Chengdu about January 17 with her
six-year-old daughter after a few days in Hong Kong with friends. She had
planned to stay with her parents in nearby Yibin.
It is understood Ms Chen entered the US consulate office in Chengdu early on
Wednesday morning seeking help. She stayed at the consulate until the early
evening, as consular officers notified the Australian embassy and tried to make
arrangements for her family or friends to collect her. Eventually a consular
officer took her to a nearby hotel where she met a family friend.
What happened next is not clear. Mr Lu said Ms Chen had phoned her mother,
saying she had been kidnapped. She asked her mother to tell her husband to ask
the Australian Government to "save me".
An officer at the Chengdu Public Security Bureau Falun Gong division would not
discuss the case over the telephone.
Falun Gong practitioners from Australia and other countries have frequently been
detained in mainland China in recent years before being deported. They have
complained of brutal treatment and beatings by police.
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
