Three Swedish falungong practitioners are still in China this Friday, the Falungong movement in Sweden announced. One of the three is detained by the police in Beijing. The Swedish Foreign Department (UD) did not succeed in getting any official notice about the Swedes.
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”Our embassy in Beijing haven´t received any information at all. And now the Chinese authorities are closing for the weekend, so we might not get any answers until Monday,” said Kristina Östergren on UD’s press statement to TT.
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Finlanders home
Some 40 foreign falungong practitioners were arrested in Tiananmen Square on Thursday. 14 persons, among them two Finnish citizens, were arrested in different hotels the day before.
Most of the arrested were put on planes out of China, while a smaller group was still detained. The two Finlanders are back home. Among the arrested were also Americans, Germans and Britons.
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Pictures of dead
On the movement’s American website www.faluninfo.net the number of Falungong practitioners who have died due to Chinese imprisonment is mentioned as 365. Pictures of young Chinese who have been killed replace one another on the site.
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Falungong in Göteborg presented a film at the press meeting that critically examines the incident when five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001. Beijing claims that the five, among them a woman and her twelve-year daughter who both died later, were Falungong practitioners. But according to the film there is a strong indication that they were not and that the two participated women did not die by burns, but in another way. The movement claims that the Chinese authorities have instead staged the immolation to slander Falungong.
Protective clothing
Several circumstances are pointing to it. This incident was assumed to have happened unexpectedly, but how could it be recorded by such high quality by Chinese TV, the fire was put out fast by the police who surprisingly were equipped with fire extinguishers, that a man who set himself on fire did not sit in lotus position as the movements´ practitioners do, and that the same man did not get so severely injured as expected. According to Falungong the group could have several layers of protective clothing against the fire.
Micke Larsson/TT Angela Ljungström/TT
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