BEIJING (AP) - A rights group Wednesday said seven more members of the outlawed Falun Gong meditation sect have died in Chinese custody, raising the death toll to 112 in the government crackdown on the group.
Four reportedly died in labor camps, including two who apparently were injured during force feeding, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The family of a 28-year-old woman who had served eight months at a camp said she appeared to have been beaten, the Hong Kong-based center reported.
Another fell from the balcony at his home and died while trying to escape police who had come to arrest him, the center said. Two more were beaten at jails, the center reported.
The death reports come amid a renewed government campaign against Falun Gong, which Beijing considers an evil cult that cheats followers and has led some 1,600 to their deaths by discouraging modern medicine and driving them to insane self-destructive acts.
The Communist Party has seized on public revulsion over an attempted group suicide by purported Falun Gong practitioners on Jan. 23 - one person died and four were injured when they set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers during the 1990s with a combination of gentle calisthenics and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the unorthodox ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former soldier and government clerk who lives in the United States.
Fearing the group's size and organization could challenge Communist Party rule, China's leaders banned it in July 1999. Core leaders have been sentenced to prison and rights groups claim thousands of rank and file members have been detained during the 18-month crackdown.
China does not comment on individual cases, but denies abusing sect members sent to labor camps or to counseling centers for deprogramming.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.