08/21/01

WASHINGTON A hastily arranged but well-organized 10-person hunger strike across from the Chinese embassy in Washington includes two Birmingham men protesting the detention of 130 Falun Gong practitioners in a labor camp.

"I try not to pay attention to the hunger feelings when they come up," said Shean Lin, a microbiology researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Since Friday, only water and salt have fueled his vigil on a shady circle surrounded by the embassy's turn-around driveway.

Lin, along with UAB graduate student Mike Chen and eight others, is trying to deliver a letter to Chinese ambassador Yang Jiechi, asking him to unconditionally release the practitioners from the Masanjia camp in Liaoning Province. On Friday, they tried to squeeze the letter through the door jamb, without luck. Monday, they somehow got buzzed in the front door, only to find a second locked door and a clerk eager to force them out, Lin said.

Falun Gong [...] is a system of meditation and exercise that practitioners say improves spiritual and physical well-being. The hunger strikers keep up their meditation on the knoll sitting on yellow mats, and sometimes even have a late-night session for interested newcomers who wander by the embassy's prime location just northwest of DuPont Circle.

Lin, no stranger to Falun Gong controversy, was unable to leave China for two months last year because of suspicions about his beliefs. But this is his first hunger strike, and on day four he was employing the Falun Gong tactic of clearing his mind. "I try to remove negative thinking and strengthen my will," Lin said while sitting on a patchwork of carpet squares and plastic sheets.

The grass at the site is well worn, however, because the hunger strikers have joined a yearlong vigil there by D.C.-based adherents. On Monday night, Lin and several others were at a nearby school planning strategy, saying they use the alternate location because they fear the Chinese government listens to conversations outside the embassy.

The shades were drawn and windows barred on the embassy's plain brick building, nondescript as foreign outposts go in the nation's capital.

Lin said he and Chen, 37, felt fine Monday night, but they did not know how long they might keep up the strike. "The situation in China is urgent," he said. "We have always just called for a peaceful dialogue."

The idea for the strike was born out of a Wednesday night phone call from April Zhang of Atlanta, Lin said. The group of 10 was in place and striking by Friday afternoon.

Sleeping in cars parked nearby and catching rides to supporters' homes for showers, Lin seemed confident he would last a few more days. He was thankful his boss at UAB, AIDS researcher Dr. Eric Hunter, allowed him time off.

"We will try our best and go as long as we can. We did not give it a limit," he said.

With press kits, cell phones and a portable generator to run the television and VCR for showing videotapes of human rights violations, the group has also attracted local media attention.