Canadian Falun Gong Practitioner Detained in Beijing

A Chinese-Canadian businesswoman who practices Falun Gong has been held against her will by the Beijing security apparatus since February.

Sun Qian, 51, is the vice president of Beijing Leadman Biochemistry Co., Ltd., a company she co-founded with her husband Shen Guangqian in 1997.

Sun was at her residence in Beijing’s Chaoyang district on Feb. 19 when she was suddenly visited by a squad of over 20 policemen. The policemen spent the next eight hours ransacking Sun’s home, and confiscated her computer, cellphone, and Falun Gong literature. Sun and her housekeeper were handcuffed and led away.

On March 28, the Beijing First Procuratorate Branch accused Sun of “using a heretical religious organization to undermine the law,” a common charge used by the Chinese regime’s legal apparatus against Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that involves slow exercises and an adherence to the teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. On July 20, 1999, former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin launched a persecution campaign against Falun Gong. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners have since been arrested and held in some form of detention, where they face torture, abuse, and even death.

When Sun was being detained, she tried to explain to the guards how Falun Gong has benefited her, and sometimes shouted out defenses of Falun Gong’s principles. As punishment for mentioning Falun Gong, Sun was locked up in a small, darkened room. The punishment was stopped after the Canadian embassy got involved, according to Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

The Epoch Times has learned that Sun is currently being held in Beijing First Detention Center’s 414 Prison Room, a facility notorious for having particularly fierce prison guards.

Sun Qian, who was born in China, became a Canadian citizen in 2007. Peter Kent, a Canadian Conservative MP, raised Sun’s detention to John McCallum, the new Canadian ambassador to China, at a May 2 Commons foreign affairs committee meeting.

McCallum said that he was briefed on Sun’s case, but declined to make a public comment. Kent disagreed with McCallum’s stance.

“While I understand that in some situations silence may be the right course, I believe that in the case of Falun Gong practitioners, given the Chinese communist government’s treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, that Canada should, in fact, raise its voice before Qian Sun is done harm,” Kent said in an interview with New Tang Dynasty Television.

“Because we know that in detention in situations like this, the Chinese authorities sometimes resort to torture and to abuse of prisoners.”

The original article from the Epoch Times can be viewed here:  http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2248344-millionaire-canadian-falun-gong-practitioner-detained-in-beijing/