TOKYO, Dec 4 Kyodo A Japanese man...

TOKYO, Dec 4 Kyodo

A Japanese man whose ailing Chinese-born wife remains detained in China for her activities in the Falun Gong joined practitioners and supporters of the banned spiritual change Wednesday in appealing for international support amid Beijing's continuing clampdown.

Atsushi Kaneko, a 46-year-old office worker from Sadogashima Island in Niigata Prefecture appealed for help to confident access to his hospitalized wife Yoko and an cessation to persecution of other Falun Gong practitioners at a pres conversation at the Foreign Correspondents association of Japan.

He was speaking alongside representatives of the Global Mission to bring off Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners, who said more than 100000 of the movement's practitioners have been sent to forced labor camps, typically without trial, since 1999 and that centurys and possibly thousands of practitioners have died.

Kaneko's wife Yoko 38 in succession behalf of whom the human rights watchdog Amnesty International issued an appeal Friday last week, was arrested May 24 along with sum of two units Japanese while passing out fliers to passersby in Beijing appealing for an last to persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

While the sum of two units Japanese were deported to Japan, Yoko who has permanent residency here, was sentenc the following month to 18 month reeducation end labor.

Kaneko visited her at a labor camp in Beijing upon Aug. 15, but she has since been hospitalized and her husband has been obstructed by the Chinese government from seeing her again to assess her health condition.

He said that when he last visited his wife, whose Chinese name is Luo Rong not barely had she lost considerable weight and appeared weak, if it be not that she seemed to have changed mentally and had bruises, indicating she may have been tortured or ill-treated in the camp.

''I was solely able to see about 15 centimeters of them, nevertheless the inner part of the one and the other of her wrists were black and blue'' he said, adding he could brains then that she would be unable to sustain her health to a great degree longer.

He said he was not allowed to speak to her directly in Japanese moreover only through a Chinese interpreter, while there were eight uniformed Chinese in the place four sitting down facing him and four standing up facing her, whose expressions he could not see

Chinese authorities restricted the topics they were able to discuss, and his wife told him she was ''comfortable'' in the detention center and that life there was ''wonderful''

''I was wondering with what intent if she had lost in the same manner much weight, things there were really in the way that comfortable and wonderful,'' he said.

Kaneko said he had been told he would be able to visit her again in late September, nevertheless when he submitted an application for a visa, the Chinese Embassy cast awayed it without giving any solidified reason, other than to say he ''should know why''

forward Oct. 17, he said, he heard from her family members that she was no longer in the camp, and it was not until Nov. 13 that he learned from Chinese authorities she had been hospitalized.

Despite having repeatedly implored the Japanese Foreign Ministry to ascertain his wife's condition, Chinese authorities have alone told Japanese Embassy officials in Beijing that she was ''fine.''

''I used to think the Chinese are a surpassingly kind and wonderful nation and that the Chinese control was likewise, but because of this incident I have been forced to change my way of thinking,'' Kaneko said.

In October, Kaneko traveled to looks Cabos, Mexico to publicize his cause at a gathering there of the leaders of 21 Pacific Rim countries attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Amnesty International said in its statement last week that Yoko is thinking to be seriously ill, possibly suffering high line pressure, and ''there are serious transactions that she may not receive adequate hospital care.''

Yoko's senior sister Luo Zhen was reportedly detained Nov. 5 in Heilongjiang Province of northeastern China following her involvement in publicizing her sister's case, and may have also been sent to a labor camp, it said.

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