[Security squeeze: police in Tiananmen Square detain a suspected member of the banned organisation as fears of another demonstration grow. Associated Press photo]

STAFF REPORTERS and AGENCIES

Beijing's international propaganda war against the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement is failing, a diplomatic source said yesterday. A Western diplomat in Beijing said: "A measure of the domestic effectiveness of the campaign is whether there is an end in sight to the campaign. That is not the case at the moment," he said.

"The campaign has stopped the further growth of Falun Gong but it has led to the formation of a hard core of believers who are proving hard to deal with."

He also said the campaign had failed as a number of Western governments had criticised the crackdown as a human rights violation.

Tiananmen Square bustled with police yesterday as security was tightened ahead of the first anniversary of the April 25 demonstration, when 10,000 Falun Gong members surrounded Beijing's Zhongnanhai leadership compound.

Two women and one man who were allegedly detained after trying to unfurl a Falun Gong banner, a method of protest members have tried almost daily since they were banned last July.

Amid the throngs of tourists who normally crowd the square, another three middle-aged men raised their arms in a meditation pose associated with the group.

Plainclothes police quickly ordered them to put their arms down, and within minutes the three were put in a police van and driven off the square.

Accounts by witnesses of detentions in the vast square have tended to underestimate the daily police haul of mostly elderly devotees from distant provinces who risk arrest and possible beatings to plead for a reversal of the Government's ban.

Police were checking trains arriving at railway stations and motorists entering the capital.

But despite the Government's heavy-handed campaign, including the airing of shocking images such as the gory aftermath of a practitioner's suicide by self-disembowelment, most Chinese do not share the authorities' hostility to the Falun Gong.

"I don't like them. But I don't think they are harmful. I don't know why the Government is so afraid of them," said a taxi driver.

Falun Gong preaches a blend of traditional beliefs, slow-motion exercises and the unconventional thinking of leader Li Hongzhi. Li, a former government grain clerk, now lives in New York.

China has labelled Falun Gong an "evil cult" and blamed it for causing 1,500 deaths by suicide or from refusing medical care.

At least 5,000 members have been sent to labour camps without trial and others have been sentenced to up to 18 years in prison after show trials, according to the group.

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