Dozen Falun members in China labour camp-HK group

Reuters, October 30, 1999

HONG KONG, Oct 30, 1999 (Reuters) - Twelve women members of China's banned Falun Gong sect have been sent to a labour camp in Jilin Province, the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said on Saturday.

The 12 school teachers are in a labour camp in Changchun city in Jilin and were sent there because they practise Falun Gong, the Centre said.

Most of them have been given a one-year sentence, it said. It could only identify two by name -- Ding Xiaoxia and Li Sulan.

The labour camp currently holds 50 Falun Gong members and on Saturday morning, more were being sent in, the Centre said.

The Centre said it could not confirm how many male Falun Gong practitioners had been sent to labour camps across the country.

But it estimated that in Jilin province alone, about 100 Falun Gong practitioners had been sent to labour camp.

The top body of China's parliament on Saturday passed a law outlawing cults. The move is aimed at the quasi-religious Falun Gong, and it called on the legal system to "smash them rigourously."

Members of Falun Gong, outlawed by decree in July, have been demonstrating all week outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing's Tiananmen Square where the standing committee of the National People's Congress has been discussing the law.