BEIJING (AP) - Fourteen imprisoned followers of the banned Falun Gong sect committed suicide in a north China labor camp, making ropes from sheets and hanging themselves from bunk beds, a government official said Wednesday.
Falun Gong, however, blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday that at least 15 women followers were tortured to death at Wanjia labor camp in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang on or around June 20. The statement cast doubt on the official claim of a mass suicide, saying the victims were watched around the clock.
The reported suicide at Wanjia would be the most deadly involving Falun Gong practitioners confirmed by the government since it banned the spiritual movement in July 1999.
Lan Jingli, director of the Heilongjiang government's judicial bureau, said that another 11 followers were rescued by camp guards. In all, 25 Falun Gong members tried to kill themselves on June 20 in Wanjia labor camp, he said.
Lan said guards watched the practitioners closely, patrolling every five minutes. But the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their cell beds with sheets, he said.
``One minute is enough to kill,'' Lan said. ``While 11 of them were immediately rescued by the camp guards, 14 others died.''
China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will to go heaven when they die.
Falun Gong, however, says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide. The group disputed government claims that five people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier this year were Falun Gong practitioners.
The meditation sect says the government is running a smear campaign against it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in police custody during the crackdown on the group.
It said the Wanjia labor camp used torture to make practitioners renounce Falun Gong. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.
In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
The sect members accused the Chinese government of ``inhumane and beastly crimes'' and denied that the 14 had tried to commit suicide.
``S.O.S.: Save Falun Gong practitioners from being killed in China,'' said one banner displayed during the protest as members practiced their slow-motion exercises.
Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas on having a hand in the suicide.
``Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of practicing,'' he said. ``The mass suicide of June 20 could also be caused through this way.''
The government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are mistreated.
Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong followers would now be watched 24 hours a day, he said.
Meanwhile, two dozen sect members in New York started a 250-mile walk from Manhattan to Washington on Tuesday to protest Beijing's increasingly violent crackdown on the group.
The official confirmation of deaths at Wanjia came after a Hong Kong-based rights group reported Tuesday that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hung themselves after officials extended their sentences by three to six months because they had staged a hunger strike to protest abuse and beatings.
The group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, cited the relative of a practitioner who was resuscitated as saying 10 people died.