04/26/2000

The Daily Telegraph

Page 31

CHINESE police detained about 100 followers of the mystical Falun Gong sect in Tiananmen Square yesterday as they marked the first anniversary of a mass protest that led to the outlawing of the group.

Groups of sect members, defying hundreds of police and plain clothes agents blanketing the square in the centre of Beijing, unfurled small yellow banners and began meditation routines in front of crowds of tourists.

Each protest lasted only moments before police wrestled the followers to the ground and dragged them to waiting vans. Officers punched one man in the face and forced six women holding children into a van.

During the protests, foreign reporters were questioned and followed by plain clothes agents and some had camera, film and government press passes confiscated. One American tourist also had the film ripped from her camera.

The demonstrations marked the first year of the boldest campaign of resistance to Communist authority since the bloodily suppressed 1989 democracy protests in the square.

Ever since the first mass protest of April 25 last year, when 10,000 silent followers converged on the Beijing compound where China's Communist leaders work and live, the Falun Gong has been subjected to the full force of state repression.

Hundreds of sect leaders have been jailed or are facing trial, while thousands more have been sent to labour camps for "re-education" without trial. Followers have also been detained in mental hospitals.

Witch hunts have been launched to root out sect members in the Communist Party, workplaces, schools and universities, snaring senior officials, high-ranking military officers and at least one judge.

A diplomat who has studied the Falun Gong, said yesterday that China's well-oiled security machine had smashed its main organisation, but middle-aged and elderly followers with no apparent fear of detention have continued to humiliate the authorities.

Although steadfastly insisting that it has no political interests and no formal structure, the sect has shown itself increasingly adept at marshalling overseas support.

Although the handful of dissident groups still active in China are wary of the sect, foreign critics of Chinese human rights - notably in the US Congress - now routinely list the Falun Gong along with political dissidents, Tibetans and underground Christians as a victim of Communist repression.

Analysts said the campaign against the Falun Gong is in danger of backfiring on the Communist leadership.

Hysterical propaganda - including the recent accusation that the sect was in league with foreign "hostile forces" - is winning it growing sympathy at home and abroad, despite its bizarre teachings, such as the healing "energy wheels" which are said to revolve within the bellies of practitioners.

Ordinary citizens express little sympathy for the sect's mystical beliefs but are growing increasingly weary of the propaganda campaign.

The Communist Party, which exists for struggle campaigns and great victories, can hardly stop now but with every new protest, its credibility suffers.

Copyright (C) 2000 The Daily Telegraph; Source: World Reporter (TM)