China Calls Detainees’ Deaths a Mass Suicide

BEIJING —  More than a dozen adherents of the outlawed Falun Gong meditation movement apparently died last month in a Chinese labor camp in what the government says was a mass suicide but the group’s representatives allege was the result of brutal mistreatment.

A government official in northeastern Heilongjiang province said that 14 Falun Gong followers hanged themselves June 20 in the Wanjia labor camp, the Associated Press reported today. Another 11 inmates also tried to kill themselves using ropes fashioned out of bedsheets but were rescued by guards, the official said.

Earlier, a Hong Kong human rights group reported a smaller number of deaths and said the victims, all women, committed suicide to protest their treatment at the camp, which is outside the provincial capital of Harbin.

But spokespersons for the banned spiritual group dispute the cause of death. They said Tuesday that 15 female practitioners had died at the hands of labor camp wardens who allegedly beat and tortured their prisoners.

The Communist regime outlawed the group in July 1999, and thousands of Falun Gong members have been shipped to labor camps across the country without trial.

In January, five suspected adherents set themselves on fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to protest the ban. The event prompted a massive renewed propaganda effort against the group, which the government brands an “evil cult” bent on controlling and destroying people.

The group maintains that more than 200 followers have died in custody. However, the numbers and accounts of deaths from both sides--the government and the group--have largely been impossible to verify independently.

Demonstrations by and arrests of Falun Gong followers in Tiananmen Square--for months a near-daily event--have tapered off significantly in recent months. Some analysts say that the government’s harsh campaign to stamp out the group is paying off.

But enforcement of the ban is spotty, and many of the group’s adherents continue to practice in private.

Statements by Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in New York, have taken on an increasingly apocalyptic tone since last year, predicting disaster for those who oppose the group and encouraging members to stand strong, even in extreme circumstances.