Guardian: 14 Falun Gong women die in detention [Excerpt]

Thursday July 5, 2001

China has admitted that 14 female members of the banned Falun Gong [group] died in a labour camp last month, but denied that they were tortured to death.

[...]

China said nothing about the incident until the Falun Gong movement abroad issued a statement yesterday claiming that at least 15 followers had been "tortured to death" in the camp.

"These deaths are in line with the large number of deaths in custody which we have monitored," an Amnesty International researcher, Isabel Kelly, said.

"Many have been due to torture, others occurred in suspicious circumstances, and we call on the Chinese government to allow them to be properly investigated by an independent authority."

A Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong, Sophie Xiao, denied that suicide was a plausible explanation.

"These people are given special treatment, which means 24-hours surveillance," she said. "They sleep on a bare mattress or on a board with no bedding or sheets, and there is no way for them to find a rope."

A news blackout was imposed at the camp after the incident, Ms Xiao said, but some information filtered out to bereaved families by way of local police stations.

A Falun Gong statement from the US gave details of four women who allegedly died from torture, based on accounts from relatives who saw their bodies.

In two of the cases listed in the statement the relatives are said to have noticed a "strangulation or rope mark on the neck."

[...]

Whatever the truth of the matter, China's admission that so many Falun Gong members have died in captivity, and at the same time, will focus more attention on the questionable detention of hundreds of believers.

Most of those in Wanjia and other camps have been sent there by an administrative order issued by the police without being subjected to any judicial process.

"It is during such detentions, where you are not in a proper prison facility, that people are most vulnerable," Ms Kelly said.

"The [Chinese] government has never been known to volunteer information on deaths in custody unless questioned from outside.

"We have stopped counting how many Falun Gong detainees have died in government captivity."

[...]