Chinese official accused of torture | WWRN

CHICAGO, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- A provincial Chinese Communist Party official visiting the United States was served with a complaint accusing him of violating the Torture Victims Protection act by oppressing followers of Falun Gong in China.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court Monday, was directed against Sichuan Provincial Committee General Secretary Zhou Youngkang, who was touring businesses and municipal agencies in the area.

"He was hand-served a summons as he was getting out of his limousine while he was going to the 911 Center," said attorney Terry Marsh Tuesday in a telephone interview from New York. "He accepted it."

Marsh, a lawyer who has represented members of the Falun Gong spiritual group in previous court actions, said the civil complaint charged the Chinese official with torture, crimes against humanity, false imprisonment, inhuman and degrading treatment, causing disappearances and other charges under the Torture Victims Protection Act and the Arien-Tort Claims Act.

She said U.S. law gave Zhou 20 days to respond to the summons and indicated the group would continue to legally go after communist officials who travel outside China.

"We intend to keep serving them," she said.

Outlawed as an "evil cult" in China, Falun Gong has been the target of a government crackdown. The movement draws from Buddhist, Taoist and folk religion and believes meditation and exercise will bring good health and morality.

One of the plantiff's, Haiyne He, a graduate student in bio-medicine at Harvard University Medical School, said his brother and sister, both Falun Gong devotees, were detained in China.

He, 36, who has lived in Boston since 1995, said his 34-year-old sister, an elementary school teacher in Sichang, was sent to a labor camp in January and that his family had not been able to contract her. His brother Haiou He, a 32-year-old doctor, was detained in October 2000 and has disappeared.

Chinese authorities are believed to have executed hundreds of followers of the banned sect. Ten Falun Gong members remained on a hunger strike Tuesday near Beijing's Central Government Liaison Office in Hong Kong protesting the imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners in China.