A Chinese official admitted that 14 Falun Gong followers...

A Chinese official admitted that 14 Falun Gong followers died in a labour camp - but the government and the spiritual movement have given sharply conflicting accounts of how they died.
The official account is that the 14 hanged themselves. But a Falun Gong spokesman said they had been murdered by guards. Lan Jingli, a judicial official in Heilongjiang province in the far north, said the prisoners hanged themselves using bedsheets. Another 11 inmates had been thwarted in their attempts to commit suicide.
Guards at the Wanjia labor camp in Harbin City watched practitioners closely, checking every five minutes, Mr Lan said. But the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their cell beds.
Falun Gong said suicide was strictly against its teachings. "Such steadfastly `unreformed' practitioners would hardly be likely to take their own lives," it said. Falun Gong said at least three of the women were cremated before they were identified by their families.The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said earlier that the women hanged themselves after their sentences were extended.
Falun Gong combines elements of Buddhist and Taoist spiritual beliefs with qi gong exercise techniques and the esoteric teaching of the movement's exiled founder, Li Hongzhi. China outlawed Falun Gong in 1999 after 10,000 followers staged a peaceful protest outside the leadership compound in Beijing.
The government began a crackdown on the movement in January, after the self-immolation of five alleged adherents in Tiananmen Square. A 12-year-old girl and her mother died in that incident. Falun Gong denied the five were followers.
China defined the group as an "evil cult" responsible for the deaths of 1660 people by suicide or refusing medical treatment. It concedes a handful have died in police custody; Falun Gong puts the figure at 234.