China puts Falun Gong member on trial for spying

China puts Falun Gong member on trial for spying
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NOV 23: A Beijing court held a secretive trial on Thursday for a follower of the banned Falun Gong meditation sect accused of spying, apparently for gathering data on China's harsh 16-month-old crackdown against the group.

Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen who is a US permanent resident, faced charges of gathering secrets and passing them on to foreign organisations, said diplomats and a Falun Gong spokeswoman.

Under Chinese law, she could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, more if the information is deemed highly important.

An official with the prosecutor's office, Zhao, confirmed Teng's trial on spying charges, although court officials denied knowing about the case. Outside Beijing's No 1 Intermediate Court, police ordered foreign reporters away without giving a reason.

The official reticence is typical for cases ostensibly involving state secrets, a concept intentionally left vague in partly unpublished laws. The campaign against Falun Gong is a sensitive political issue in China, with communist leaders and police embarrassed by their inability to quash the sect.

Teng played a role in bolstering the group's defiance and publicising the crackdown. She joined Falun Gong last year in New Jersey and her acupuncture clinic in New York City's midtown area became an informal clubhouse for the group, said Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York.

Under the pseudonym Hannah Li, Teng returned to Beijing in February. Off and on for two months she contacted foreign journalists, tipping them off to planned protests and helping to arrange interviews.

An indictment dated July 27 and later passed along to Teng's family accused her of causing "serious damage" to China, said Rachlin. Specifically it charged her with sneaking foreign reporters into a psychiatric hospital in suburban Beijing where sect followers were detained - an accusation Rachlin said was true.

When police arrested Teng was not known. A Hong Kong-based rights group has said she was being held in Beijing's Banbuqiao Detention Centre.

Rachlin said Teng's husband, a US citizen whom she would not identify, had flown to Beijing to monitor the trial, although diplomats in touch with the man earlier said China had refused to grant him a visa.

No family members were being allowed to attend the trial, said one of the diplomats, who declined to be further identified. The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported that only Teng's lawyers would be with her.

The US Embassy in Beijing said it had no information on Teng. US law does not require US diplomats to provide legal assistance to residency holders.

Falun Gong drew millions of adherents in the 1990s with its mix of slow-motion exercise and mix of ideas from Taoism, Buddhism and its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk now living in the United States.

Worried that the group's size and organisational could challenge the Communist Party's monopoly on power, China banned the group as a dangerous cult. An unrelenting smear campaign in state-controlled media has accused Falun Gong of causing at least 1,500 deaths.