February 12, 2002

An engineering student from Barrie has been detained by Chinese authorities for showing a video that claims an incident in which five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square one year ago was staged by the Chinese government.

Falun Dafa practitioners Jason Loftus, 22, and Levi Browde, 29, from New York, took the video to China and held a secret press conference yesterday, the eve of Chinese New Year.

Afterward, they went to Tiananmen Square, unfurled a banner saying "Falun Dafa is Good," and tried to show the video on a lap-top computer.

Police wrestled Loftus, 22, a University of Toronto student, struggling and shouting "Falun Gong is good!" at the top of his voice, into a nearby police van.

Browde, 29, a software expert from New York, was led peacefully on board shortly afterward, the witnesses said.

[...]

Yesterday's protest was at least the third in Tiananmen Square by western followers of Falun Dafa.

Foreign Affairs in Ottawa is aware Loftus has been detained. But because of closed offices for Chinese New Year celebrations, it has been unable to confirm where he is being held, a spokesperson said.

Loftus' mother, Mary, found out what happened to her son through a 6 a.m. phone call yesterday from one of his friends.

"It's not something I wanted him to do but I understand the cause," she said yesterday.

Loftus has been a practitioner of Falun Dafa for three years after learning about it at a Barrie health show.

"I think it will help in the long run, I just didn't want it to be him. He is my son," she said.

Falun Dafa activists have long denied that the people who set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square a year ago to protest the crackdown on Falun Dafa were actually practitioners of the spiritual movement.

They claim the incident was a propaganda campaign to vilify and discredit the group worldwide.

Chinese authorities blamed Falun Dafa for that Jan. 23, 2001, suicide attempt and made it the centre of a massive propaganda campaign against the spiritual group.

The 20-minute Falun Dafa video, A Staged Incident, is based on footage of the event shown on Chinese state television. It points out what it says are inconsistencies in the official account and questions details of the event.

[...]

The video includes a sequence in slow motion apparently showing someone hitting a woman in the group in the head while police put out the fire.

China banned Falun Dafa in July, 1999. Before then, the group, which combines exercises with traditional Chinese beliefs and the teachings of its founder, Li Hongzhi, had tens of millions of followers in the country.

Since 1999, many practitioners, both Chinese and foreign, have protested in the square and have been arrested.

"They go to Tiananmen Square to appeal to the hearts of the citizens," said Jillian Ye, a practitioner and friend of Loftus.

Last month, Connie Chipkar, 61, of Mississauga was interrogated and expelled after staging a lone protest.

With files from Reuters and AP

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