Hamburg Evening News: "Hamburg [citizen] disappears in China"

February 15, 2002

Twenty-three-year-old Florian Akbar from Ottensen had obviously been arrested by police in Beijing yesterday. A policeman supposedly grabbed the student by his hair and threw him on the ground, so said a spokesperson for the International Association of Human Right (IGFM) in Frankfurt/Germany. Since the incident happened, his family members have never heard from him again.

Mr. Akbar had gone to Tiananmen Square to join other foreigners who had gathered for a protest action against the ban of Falun Gong in China. Several hundred police officers disbanded the protest gathering. According to eyewitnesses, the police drove away over forty protesters. The Foreign Department does not yet have a clear picture of the number of arrested persons. The embassy had tried to establish contact with the incarcerated individuals.

Although Mr. Akbar is a member of the Falun Gong movement, his wife Szilvia, age 21, does not believe that he had participated in the demonstration. Prior to leaving his hotel yesterday morning, Mr. Akbar had telephoned his wife. "He was in the best of moods," remembers Mrs. Szilvia Akbar.

The young student couple has been married only a few months. This one-week trip [to Beijing] was Mrs. Akbar's gift to her husband, "because he wanted to go so badly."