Three Chinese students taking courses in Dublin have been prevented from returning from China to Ireland after the New Year holiday, apparently because of activities as practitioners of the Falun Gong movement.
One has been detained by police, and two are under house arrest, according to a Dublin-based Falun Gong member, Ms Dai Dongxue from Shandong Province, a Microsoft employee in Dublin.
Falun Gong combines breathing exercises with elements of Taoism and Buddhism, and was banned as an "evil cult" by the Chinese government in July after members staged a big demonstration in Beijing to demand an end to official harassment. Several of its leaders in China have been sentenced to long prison terms.
Details of the three students' cases were given by Ms Dai in a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs on January 20th. "We want the Irish Government to ask the Chinese government to let them come back to study in Ireland and keep a normal life," she said yesterday in Dublin.
A Department official said: "These are Chinese citizens at home in China and we have no jurisdiction in the matter."
However, the Department had raised concerns about the treatment of Falun Gong in the context of bilateral exchanges, he said, most recently in December when a senior Department official, Mr Tom Bolster, met Chinese officials in Dublin.
The student held in prison is Ms Yang Fang, an accountancy student in a Dun Laoghaire college, was arrested by police on December 19th when staying in a friend's home in Beijing with three other Falun Gong practitioners from the UK.
The British practitioners were deported to the UK after a couple of days' detention, but Ms Yang is still detained in her home city of Shenyang in Liaoning Province, Ms Dai said.
Mr Zhao Ming, a postgraduate student in the Computer Science Department at Trinity College was detained when he went to the State Council Complaints Office in Beijing on January 5th, she said.
He was released on bail after a few days, but his passport was confiscated until he writes a confession agreeing not to complain about government policy on Falun Gong. He is under house arrest in Jilin Province.
Mr Liu Feng, a marketing student in Dun Laoghaire Community College, is under house arrest in Liaoning Province, after bringing a letter home defending Falun Gong, according to Ms Dai.
On December 12th he attended a Falun Gong conference in Hong Kong, during which he gave an interview to The Irish Times defending the movement, saying: "We are not a sect. A sect is closed and secret. We don't mind people coming to have a look at us to see that Falun Gong is only for the improvement of the body and the mind".
Ms Dai said that she herself was detained for four days on January 1st when she asked directions to the State Council Complaints Office in Beijing, and was sent back to Ireland on January 4th.