BEIJING, Feb 11, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- An American Falun Gong follower was arrested Monday in Tiananmen Square after unfurling a banner and protesting China's treatment of the banned group on the eve of the lunar new year.
Chinese police arrested Levi Broude, 29, within seconds of the start of his protest. Last year, on the eve of Chinese new year, five people alleged to be Falun Gong practitioners set themselves on fire in Tiananmen. Two people, including a 12-year-old girl, died from their burns.
Broude, before the protest, said he worked for a Wall Street software firm and was in Beijing to denounce what he called the lies of the Chinese government about last year's fiery protests. China's state-run media used the incident to revitalize a campaign against the religious sect, but Falun Gong said the five were not members of the group.
China banned Falun Gong in 1999 as an "evil cult" and has since then carried out an ongoing crackdown against the group's followers. China claims the ban on Falun Gong is to protect the rights of the Chinese people and that the group is responsible for the deaths of nearly 1,600 people either by suicide or by refusing medical treatment in favor of meditation.
Human right's groups say tens of thousands of Falun Gong adherents have been jailed and more than 150 have died in detention due to mistreatment.
An engineering student from Barrie has been detained by Chinese authorities for showing a video that claims an incident in which five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square one year ago was staged by the Chinese government.
Falun Dafa practitioners Jason Loftus, 22, and Levi Browde, 29, from New York, took the video to China and held a secret press conference yesterday, the eve of Chinese New Year.
Afterward, they went to Tiananmen Square, unfurled a banner saying "Falun Dafa is Good," and tried to show the video on a lap-top computer.
Police wrestled Loftus, 22, a University of Toronto student, struggling and shouting "Falun Gong is good!" at the top of his voice, into a nearby police van.
Browde, 29, a software expert from New York, was led peacefully on board shortly afterward, the witnesses said.
The Chinese government calls Falun Dafa - also known as Falun Gong - an evil religious cult and banned it in 1999.
But its followers say it's a mixture of breathing exercises to promote health, traditional Chinese thinking and moral precepts.
Yesterday's protest was at least the third in Tiananmen Square by western followers of Falun Dafa.
Foreign Affairs in Ottawa is aware Loftus has been detained. But because of closed offices for Chinese New Year celebrations, it has been unable to confirm where he is being held, a spokesperson said.
Loftus' mother, Mary, found out what happened to her son through a 6 a.m. phone call yesterday from one of his friends.
"It's not something I wanted him to do but I understand the cause," she said yesterday.
Loftus has been a practitioner of Falun Dafa for three years after learning about it at a Barrie health show.
"I think it will help in the long run, I just didn't want it to be him. He is my son," she said.
Falun Dafa activists have long denied that the people who set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square a year ago to protest the crackdown on Falun Dafa were actually practitioners of the spiritual movement.
They claim the incident was a propaganda campaign to vilify and discredit the group worldwide.
Chinese authorities blamed Falun Dafa for that Jan. 23, 2001, suicide attempt and made it the centre of a massive propaganda campaign against the spiritual group.
The 20-minute Falun Dafa video, A Staged Incident, is based on footage of the event shown on Chinese state television. It points out what it says are inconsistencies in the official account and questions details of the event.
According to authorities, two people died in the self-immolation - a woman and her 12-year-old daughter. Four people were sentenced to life in prison on charges of organizing it, including one man said to have set himself on fire.
The video includes a sequence in slow motion apparently showing someone hitting a woman in the group in the head while police put out the fire.
China banned Falun Dafa in July, 1999. Before then, the group, which combines exercises with traditional Chinese beliefs and the teachings of its founder, Li Hongzhi, had tens of millions of followers in the country.
Since 1999, many practitioners, both Chinese and foreign, have protested in the square and have been arrested.
"They go to Tiananmen Square to appeal to the hearts of the citizens," said Jillian Ye, a practitioner and friend of Loftus.
Last month, Connie Chipkar, 61, of Mississauga was interrogated and expelled after staging a lone protest.