(AP) BEIJING Wednesday, July 26, 2000 -- A follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group choked to death while in detention after police forcibly fed her to end her hunger strike, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Elementary school teacher An Xiukun, 50, was arrested June 6 while protesting a ban on the group in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

An, who was being held at a detention center hear her home in Hengshui in central China's Hebei province, launched a hunger strike to protest being shackled, the group said.

Six days into the protest, guards forced food down her throat, causing her to choke, the center said.

The account could not be immediately confirmed. No telephone number for the detention center was available, but a man who answered the telephone at Hengshui's jail said no Falun Gong followers had been detained in the area.

An is the 25th Falun Gong follower to die in detention since the government banned the sect a year ago, the center said.

While the government has not responded to each accusation of abuse, it denies mistreating detained Falun Gong followers.

(AFP) HONG KONG, Wednesday, July 26, 2000 - A school teacher member of the outlawed Falungong spiritual group died in a detention center in northern China after police attempted to end her hunger strike by force-feeding her, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said Wednesday.

An Xiukun, 50, an elementary school teacher in Hengshui city, Hebei province, suffocated on June 23 in the Hengshui Administrative Detention Center, after six days on hunger strike protesting her "unjust detention," the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Police in Hengshui refused to comment on the case.

Zhang Qizeng, An's husband, was subsequently arrested on July 20 and sentenced without trial to three years reform through labor for protesting the manner in which his wife died and demanding compensation, the center said.

The human rights group has recorded the deaths of at least 25 Falungong followers who have died while in police custody since the government banned the group in July 1999.

"Due to the extremely strong prohibition by the central authorities on human rights groups like ours to investigate these kinds of cases, it is difficult to make accurate tabulations, but our center believes that there are far more than 25 cases of such deaths," it said.

An was detained on June 6 on Tiananmen Square in Beijing for protesting at the ban on the group. After continued protests while in detention, police bound her feet with wire, the center said, resulting in her hunger strike.

She had practiced Falungong for three years.