Monday, February 14, 2000

REUTERS

Updated at 1.26pm:

More than 100 practitioners of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement have been on a hunger strike since February 4 to protest their detention by mainland authorities, a human rights group said on Monday.

The Information Centre of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said 140 Falun Gong followers began the hunger strike in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun on the eve of the Lunar New Year on February 4.

It did not say when the 140 adherents were detained.

The Hong Kong-based group said a Falun Gong member died in jail last October four days after beginning a hunger strike.

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