Cult case: farce or facts?

Xinhua News Agency released a bylined article on Wednesday detailing the recent activities of Falun Gong member Tracy Zhao and exposing lies in her testimony at a US congressional hearing in early March.

According to the March 3 reports from overseas Falun Gong websites, the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives held a hearing in Washington on March 2 on human rights and religious freedom in China.

At the hearing, Tracy Zhao, a resident of New York who is a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines and a Falun Gong follower, testified before the congressional panel about her "illegal detention" on Tian'anmen Square during this year's Spring Festival.

Zhao recounted in her statement: "Shortly before midnight on February 4th, which was the night before the Chinese New Year, I arrived at Tian'anmen Square. I saw many policemen beating and kicking Falun Gong practitioners and dragging them into police vans.

"We were all taken to the nearby police station. There were hundreds of practitioners being held there. Some were bleeding in the face; Others had bruises or black eyes," she said.

"In the early hours of February 5, around 1,200 practitioners, including myself, were taken to the Dongcheng detention centre on the outskirts of Beijing. For 24 hours there was no water or heat. Each of us received only two pieces of Chinese bread for food. And we were not allowed to use the bathroom," she said.

"After 24 hours, the police questioned me and I told them I was an American citizen. They didn't believe me and sent me to a prison cell," Zhao said.

"Every practitioner in my cell had been abused at some point by the prison guards and policemen. In prison, we were given two meals a day, and it was always two pieces of Chinese bread with cabbage soup," she said.