Friday August 24 7:29 AM ET

HONG KONG (AP) - The Falun Gong spiritual group staged a protest Friday demanding the release of a follower, jailed in mainland China for filing a lawsuit against President Jiang Zemin. About 120 adherents of Falun Gong, which is outlawed in mainland China but remains legal in Hong Kong, sat in meditation poses outside the Hong Kong government offices before 20 of them marched to the Chinese government's local liaison office.

The followers also protested what they called the illegal detention and torture of 130 [group] members in a Chinese labor camp in the northeastern province of Liaoning, who have been on a hunger strike for more than three weeks.

In a petition letter addressed to Hong Kong's No. 2 official, Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang, Falun Gong criticized local leaders for taking a passive attitude toward the imprisonment of a Hong Kong resident, Chu O-ming.

Falun Gong spokeswoman Hui Yee-han said the group has asked Bowen Leung, director of the Hong Kong office in Beijing to visit Chu, but he refused to help.

''Chu has no relative in Hong Kong to appeal for him,'' Hui said. ''I doubt whether the Hong Kong government has ever done anything.''

A spokeswoman for Tsang was not immediately available for comment.

Falun Gong member Linda Duan told reporters during Friday's rally that public security officers came to her house in Beijing and arrested Chu and her nephew Wang Jie on Sept. 7, after they sued Jiang over his crackdown on the [group].

Chu, a Hong Kong businessman, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in the northern Chinese city of Tianjian, while Wang, a law student, was released on medical parole after he suffered severe injury to his kidneys during detention, said Duan who was a practicing doctor in China.

''They had no warrant or evidence but simply arrested them,'' Duan said. ''Wang is still very sick.''

''I talked to Chu's mother yesterday and she said he is not in good shape, either,'' she said. ''She told me not to come out and speak because they are under great pressure.''

The [group] says at least 268 of its followers have died in police custody, but the Chinese government has denied any abuse.

Falun Gong has attracted millions of followers, most of them in China, with its combination of slow-motion exercises [...].

Adherents are free to practice in Hong Kong, where citizens enjoy considerably more freedom under a government system put into place when Britain handed the city back to China four years ago.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010824/wl/hong_kong_banned_sect_1.html