China Frees 3 U.S. Members of Falun Gong

Three California residents who were detained in southern China for their involvement with the outlawed Falun Gong sect have been released after a two-week ordeal in police custody, a human rights group said Tuesday.

Authorities in the city of Shenzhen released the followers of the meditation group Monday, and the three arrived in neighboring Hong Kong later that evening, said the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The trio’s release came a day after four key members were slapped with stiff prison sentences for their part in organizing the mystical sect, which Beijing views as a threat to its rule.

The three from California--Feng Lili, Zhao Chen and Huang Yun--were arrested Dec. 15 after crossing the border from Hong Kong, where they had attended a Falun Gong conference, to meet with fellow believers in Shenzhen.

Feng, a scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, told of being forced to work 12 hours a day making combs at the detention center, then shivering at night in cramped quarters where she had to sleep on the floor.

Feng, who has lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, and her two companions, who live in the Bay Area, were told they would remain in custody for 15 days. But they were released two days early because of “pressure from the international media,” which had picked up news of the arrests, the rights organization said.

Feng’s husband, Yiyang Xia, co-owner of Torrey Pines Biolabs in San Diego, said he spoke to his wife by telephone and arranged for a plane ticket back to the U.S.

“She was in good spirits, very strong spiritually,” Xia said. “By Chinese standards, she was not mistreated in jail--she wasn’t beaten or physically abused. They made her work, just like everybody works in jail.”

Xia said he doubts that he or his wife will return to China.

“The Communists are afraid of Falun Gong, even though it is a peaceful group,” he said. “They are afraid of anything they cannot control. They know that the people they arrested are good people. We are thankful that there was so much international pressure on the government that it had to admit what it has done.”

Xia said that during the ordeal, he and the couple’s son “tried not to think about what could happen. If you think too much about these things, it only hurts yourself. We all will have a party at the airport when my wife arrives.”

Feng’s fellow researchers at Scripps had written the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Li Zhaoxing, that Feng is a “kind, considerate, honest and nonviolent person” and that her studies “are of potentially great importance to the People’s Republic of China as well as the rest of the world.”

Feng, an assistant professor of immunology at Scripps, is researching the role of certain molecules in the cellular inflammation process, which could be of significance in finding cures for AIDS, cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had urged the State Department to intervene with the Chinese to ensure that Feng and the two others were “treated fairly and appropriately.”

As green-card holders, Feng, Zhao and Huang are permanent U.S. residents but remain Chinese nationals, which prevents Washington from intervening directly in their behalf.

In recent weeks, a small number of overseas Falun Gong practitioners have come to Beijing to join protests over the government’s ban on the group, which preaches a mix of Buddhist and Taoist beliefs.

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Chu reported from Beijing and Perry from San Diego.