Wednesday August 28, 2002

KITCHENER -- The first time Tracy Guo phoned her mother in China and she wasn't there, she got suspicious.

When she phoned again and again, and she still wasn't there, she became terrified.

"My dad kept saying she went to the city to visit my aunt," Guo said.

But the 20-year-old Wilfrid Laurier University student knew otherwise.

Guo says her father couldn't tell her the truth because their phone had been tapped.

Her mother had been detained by Chinese police, and she didn't speak to her until months later when she was released, Guo said.

This is the type of persecution that Falun Gong practitioners say is happening across China every day.

About 10 practitioners of Falun Gong -- a spiritual movement that emphasizes meditation for physical and mental health -- held a press conference outside Kitchener City Hall yesterday, and they later travelled to Cambridge and Stratford.

The group of practitioners from around Toronto and Waterloo has been travelling across Ontario the last few weeks.

About 12 Canadians have family members who are imprisoned in China because they practise Falun Gong, the group claims.

Mayor Carl Zehr wasn't present, but they left him a package asking him to lobby the Canadian government to rescue the incarcerated practitioners.

Since the communist Chinese government began [persecuting] Falun Gong about three years ago, authorities have used electric shocks, sexual abuse and even executions to deter the movement, the group alleges.

The Chinese government fears the popularity of the decade-old movement might cause dissent, said Mo Chen, a 22-year-old University of Waterloo student.

"That's the main reason my family came to Canada," said Chen, who came to Vancouver about eight years ago.

"They didn't feel they had any freedom in China. They weren't allowed to express any religious beliefs."

Canada can pressure Chinese President Jiang Zemin at October's Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico, and has persuaded China to release practitioners in the past, Chen said.

A detained practitioner named Shenli Lin was recently reunited with his wife in Montreal thanks in part to the Canadian government.

As China further opens its borders to foreign markets, and becomes more active internationally by hosting the Olympics in 2008 and trying to join the World Trade Organization, it becomes more receptive to international sentiment, Chen said.

"The Chinese government really cares about what the world thinks about it," he said.

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