Falun Gong members in Toronto deny that the highly publicized arrest of local follower Zenon Dolnyckyj, 23, in Beijing was contrived.
The Chinese government is telling lies about the outlawed sect, they say, and a videotaped protest in Tiananmen Square on Monday, immediately suppressed by the Chinese police, was meant to expose those lies.
"My presence as a white person there with others will provide a strong contradiction to the lies," Dolnyckyj said in a statement before he arrived in Toronto last night after China released him.
Toronto practitioners admitted the protest by 30 practitioners from 10 countries had been carefully planned -- down to a lightning getaway.
Seats for Falun Gong foreigners had been booked on flights leaving Bejiing immediately after the protest.
Joel Chipkar told reporters he pinned a tiny video camera to his lapel to record the protest. He said he left Tiananmen Square immediately afterward to put his video on a Canada-bound jet.