Students at Trinity College Dublin are to march to the Chinese embassy in the city this week to call for the release of a former classmate imprisoned and allegedly tortured in a labour camp near Beijing.
Mr Zhao Ming (30), a postgraduate computer science student and former tutor at the university, was arrested on a visit home last Christmas because of his membership of the outlawed spiritual movement, Falun Gong.
His passport was confiscated and he went into hiding for six months but was rearrested in a fresh clampdown against the movement and sentenced to two years at the Tuan He Farm labour camp in Daxing County.
According to human rights campaigners, he has been beaten and tortured into signing a statement denouncing Falun Gong, whose practices centre on breathing exercises and meditation.
An estimated 82 Falun Gong practitioners have been killed in police custody since the movement was banned as an "evil cult" in July 1999.
Ms Dai Dongxue, a Dublin-based Falun Gong member, said concern was growing for Mr Ming's welfare. "We haven't heard anything about him for a few weeks now and we are very worried. The conditions in the camps are very bad."
Wednesday's protest is being organised by the graduate and undergraduate students' unions at Trinity, along with Amnesty International, Falun Gong practitioners in Ireland and other human rights campaigners. The rally will start at 1.30 p.m. at Trinity's Front Gate, reassembling at the Chinese embassy on Ailesbury Road at 3.30 p.m.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said that as Mr Ming was not an Irish citizen, it had no consular function in the matter.
