Taipei, Taiwan - The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong-supported newspaper, launched a one-week relay hunger strike on Tuesday outside the second exhibition hall of the Taipei World Trade Center to protest recent violent actions taken against members of their group by the Chinese authorities.
The relay hunger strike began earlier this month in North America, with similar actions being undertaken by other Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia.
A spokeswoman for the newspaper said Lee Yuan, one of the Epoch Times's computer engineers in the United States, was seriously beaten February 8 in his Atlanta, Georgia apartment by Chinese secret agents. Then the agents destroyed his computer equipment, with which he had maintained the newspaper's Web site.
Lee had reportedly succeeded in breaking through Chinese Internet restrictions to publish online the number of members who had left the Communist Party of China. The Epoch Times claimed eight million members have quit and resigned from the CPC since December 2004.
The relay hunger strike is scheduled to last until February 19, but organizers said it may last longer.