BEIJING, Aug 30 (AFP) - A labor camp condemned by rights activists as a notorious torture centre for members of the Falungong sect is in fact a bright, cheerful place where inmates are well fed and freely repent their past crimes, China's state media claimed Thursday.
The report by the official Xinhua news agency also rejected claims that 130 Falungong followers were on hunger strike at the Masanjia labor camp in northeast China's Liaoning province.
"It was lunch time in the Masanjia Reeducation Institute... The big and well-lit dining hall was packed with inmates eating their meals, which consisted of meat, aubergine, potato, pickles and rice," Xinhua said.
Zhang Yanli, identified as a former Falungong practitioner, was quoted saying the food was much better than she had expected.
"The diet is colorful and we have different food for three meals a day," she reportedly told the agency.
The camp has also succeeded in "reeducating" more than 90 percent of the 1,000 female Falungong members housed there, Xinhua added.
"The past for me is like a nightmare," Sun Guizhen, 56, was quoted as saying. "Each time I see my husband, daughter and grandson, I regret having followed Falungong."
In contrast to this rosy picture, Falungong's New York headquarters had said on August 10 about 130 followers had gone on a lengthy hunger strike at Masanjia, protesting at the camp authorities' decision to keep them beyond their original terms.
The quasi-Buddhist group said prisoners at the camp were treated brutally and that in one incident officers stripped 18 female Falungong practitioners naked before throwing them into the cells of male convicts.
Camp official contacted by AFP had declined to comment on the report.
Since Falungong was outlawed two years ago, numerous reports have surfaced about brutal abuse members in labor camps.
Neither account of conditions at the camp can be verified as China refuses to open up its jail facilities to scrutiny.
Tens of thousands of Falunlong practitioners have been sent to "re-education through labor" centres since the Chinese government banned the group as an "evil cult" in July 1999.
Hundreds of practitioners have been given prison sentences and a total of 156 have died in police custody, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Beijing considers Falungong a threat to social stability and a challenge to its authority.