03/06/2000
Reuters English News Service

HONG KONG, March 6 (Reuters) - Police in Beijing detained four American Chinese to prevent them from petitioning members of China's parliament on behalf of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, a Hong Kong rights groups said on Monday.

Police in the capital took three American-Chinese Falun Gong followers and an American-Chinese child from a residence on March 4, the day before parliament opened its annual session, the Information Centre of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said in a statement.

The information centre identified the four as Loretta Sukmei Lam, Jein Shyue, Qian Zhizhen and her 12-year-old son David Sun. Shyue was originally from Taiwan but the origins of the other three were not clear.

Four mainland Chinese Falun Gong adherents with U.S. residency rights - Fan Wenqing, Zeng Sheng, Wang Yili and Quo Wei - and eight mainland Falun Gong adherents were taken away in the same round-up, the group said.

All of the detained adults were engineers who had flown to Beijing from San Franscisco to try to petition members of the National People's Congress during its 11-day session, the Hong Kong group said.

It said it had not heard anything else about the detainees as of late Monday.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.