WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Banned Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong on Friday called on President George W. Bush to use his visit to China in October to plead the case of one of its jailed followers, permanent U.S. resident Teng Chunyan.
"We fully expect President Bush to use all possible means to ensure Dr. Teng's freedom, including the leverage afforded by his visit to China next month," Falun Gong's main spokesman Erping Zhang told a news conference.
"We think this will be a good opportunity for our president to bring Dr. Teng's case to Chinese leaders," he said.
The State Department has complained about the detention of Teng, a New York-based doctor who practiced and taught traditional Chinese medicine, along with those of several China-born academics detained in China in the past year.
The release in July of U.S. citizen Li Shaomin, convicted of spying for Taiwan, and U.S. residents Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang, detained on similar charges, was believed to be due in large part to pressure from U.S. officials.
Bush even brought up the cases of detained U.S.-connected scholars in a telephone conversation with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in early July, the State Department said, although it declined to disclose the names of those discussed.
Bush will meet Jiang face to face for the first time in Shanghai at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum before moving on to Beijing for a state visit.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, mixes traditional Chinese exercises with Taoist and Buddhist elements of meditation and philosophy. Its practitioners extol its powers of healing both physical and emotional ailments.
Beijing banned the movement in 1999 after it surprised China's leaders by staging a mass protest around the Zhongnanhai leadership compound.
Since then more than 50,000 practitioners have been sent to prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals, according to Falun Gong figures that cannot be confirmed. Human rights groups estimate some 200 Falun Gong adherents have died from torture during detention in China.
Teng, who went to China to try to document alleged abuses of Falun Gong practitioners in mental hospitals, has been charged with illegally providing state information to foreigners because she gave some of the data she collected to Western journalists.