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China slams U.S. asylum for Falun Gong members

BEIJING: China told the United States on Thursday not to give asylum to Chinese members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement and said U.S. criticism of a tough crackdown on it threatened to create "new difficulties" in ties.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said China "resolutely opposed" any grant of asylum to Chinese practitioners of Falun Gong -- a mishmash of Buddhism, Taoism, meditation and breathing exercises designed to harness energy in the body and heal.

He urged Washington to "understand and respect the Chinese government's principled stand" on a crackdown on the movement which has drawn widespread criticism abroad, especially in the United States.

Otherwise, U.S. criticism risked "creating new dificulties" to bilateral relations, he said.

China says 1,400 practitioners have died following Falun precepts for self-healing rather than seeking medical help, and justified a crackdown on Falun Gong describing it as an "evil cult that endangered Chinese society and people".

Zhu told a news conference the crackdown on the movement was designed to protect the basic human rights and freedom of Chinese citizens and maintaining social stability.

Some 20 Falun Gong leaders have been jailed for up to 18 years in the crackdown on the group, which claims 100 million members worldwide. Beijing says there were only two million in China.

About 300 other leaders face trial, while 5,000 have been sent to labour camps to undergo "re-education", administrative punishment that requires no judicial process, according to a Hong Kong-based human rights watchdog.

Defiant adherents have staged repeated bold protests in Tiananmen Square, the political heart of China, since the group was outlawed last year.

The movement's charismatic leader Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States, says his movement is apolitical and poses no threat to Communist rule. He preaches salvation from a world corrupted by science, technology and decadence.-Reuters