China has allowed an Australian member of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to leave the country but has detained a U.S. citizen reportedly linked to the group, embassy officials said on Thursday.
Australian citizen Nancy Chen, 34, left China by plane on Thursday, an Australian embassy spokesman said. Chen was arrested in the southwestern city of Chengdu on January 22, the spokesman said, but he declined to give the reasons for her arrest.
Police in the southern city of Guangzhou arrested U.S. citizen Chuck Lee on January 22 on suspicion that he had attempted to interrupt television and radio broadcasts in the eastern city of Yangzhou, a U.S. embassy spokesman
said [editor - Chuck Lee was arrested within 2 hours of his arrival in China from America. Falun Gong practitioners believe that the charges against Mr. Lee are falsified.]
Lee was later taken to Yangzhou, where consular officials visited him on Tuesday, the spokesman said. No date has been set for Lee to answer formal charges, he said.
The spokesman declined to confirm reports that Lee was also a Falun Gong member.
[...]
Earlier this month, China sentenced four Falun Gong members to up to 20 years in prison after convicting them of interrupting local cable television broadcasts in the northwestern province of Qinghai.
[..]
The group, [...] claims hundreds of followers have died at the hands of Chinese police and thousands more have been sent to labour camps without trial since Falun Gong was banned in 1999.
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