BEIJING (AP)--In an unbending defense of China's widely criticized crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, a government anti-cult official said Tuesday that the group acts like a "spiritual drug" on its followers and that labor camp guards treat imprisoned practitioners as doctors would patients.
Liu Jing, head of a Cabinet office formed in September to coordinate the nationwide campaign against Falun Gong, also assailed U.S. officials for criticizing China's relentless 19-month crackdown on the group.
"They choose to turn a blind eye to the dangers and harm caused by the Falun Gong cult," Liu said at a news conference. "This shows they are using this issue to make a fuss and using human rights as a pretense to interfere in other countries affairs."
Liu did not directly address questions about whether practitioners have died in custody or about how many have been sent to labor camps.
But he dismissed as rumor claims by Falun Gong and rights groups that more than 100 followers have been killed. He said followers are not sent to labor camps merely for practicing Falun Gong but for committing crimes such as protesting.
Labor camps have helped practitioners, "wake up from their addiction to the cult and return to a normal state of mind," he said. "In reeducation through labor, we have the following saying: Act as teachers do with their students, as doctors do with patients, as parents do with their children."
Falun Gong claims 5,000 of its members have been sent without trial to labor camps, that scores have been tortured and abused in custody and that 155 have been killed - a tally that rises by the week.
The United Nations' top human rights official, Mary Robinson, said Tuesday she has raised concerns about China's treatment of Falun Gong followers during her current visit to Beijing. Her office has received "many" complaints of ill-treatment, torture and heavy sentences, she said.
"My message is they have human rights that must be respected," she said in an interview. "The issue I want to focus on is actual treatment of individuals."
But Liu, head of the State Council Office for the Prevention and Handling of Cults, said Robinson was ill-informed.
"I think her problem is that she really doesn't understand the Falun Gong cult," Liu said of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Liu said Falun Gong was as much of a social menace as drugs. The group has destroyed tens of thousands of families and killed 1,660 people, many of them "obsessive practitioners" who eschewed modern medicine, he said.
"The Falun Gong cult is like a spiritual drug. It does as much harm to its practitioners, particularly those devout practitioners, as drugs," he said. 27/02/01 09-04G