10 July 2001 / 03:43 AM

WHEN mainland leaders decided to outlaw the Falun Gong movement two years ago, they might not have thought the crackdown would be such a long-lasting and difficult task.

The [party' name omitted] government wanted to demonstrate its strength. But looking back, the campaign has so far only underscored the regime's weakness in governance.

Since the ban was issued in July 1999, the Falun Gong has kept up an underground campaign of resistance.

Beijing leaders saw it as necessary to embark on the campaign to crush the movement despite its members' vehement denials of having any political agenda.

The home-born spiritual movement espouses [...] exercises, clean living [...]. But Chinese leaders have ordered thousands of police to ring Tiananmen Square in an attempt to stop any protest by followers at the heart of Chinese politics. They have jailed hundreds of followers and sent thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, to labour camps.

In some extreme cases, law officers have even stooped to torture. Such tactics have only radicalised the traditional [group].

The apolitical [...] religious movement has now been forced into becoming a disciplined and well-organised opposition force - far more so than the mainland's decade-old, small and scattered pro-democracy movement.

With its strong beliefs, the millions-strong army is now implacably opposed to the regime and has managed to survive, and has thus become the most serious challenge to the [party' name omitted] regime in half a century.

In the first place, the Falun Gong likely has no political agenda. Most of its members are middle-aged women or retired elders who were left in the cold by the two decades of capitalist reform. The movement is more about seeking relief in the soul than about having clear political aims.

The saga has now developed into a nightmare worse than a mere internal affair: it has caused diplomatic ripples reaching major Western nations that might cost the mainland heavily in the process of seeking to benefit from globalisation.

The ripples are now spreading as far away as Europe and America, showing that Beijing's harsh line on the spiritual group is becoming more and more of a diplomatic liability.

Beijing's recently intensified crackdown has attracted a worldwide chorus of condemnation.

Another step that would have the potential to raise tempers in capitals around the globe would be a decision by Beijing to ban the movement in Hong Kong.

The Special Administrative Region is being trapped in a political dilemma as top officials, including Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, have apparently been tempted to make questionable statements to support their [party' name omitted] bosses in Beijing.

The crackdown on religious freedom in Hong Kong could touch on Beijing's willingness to realise its promise to grant Hong Kong high autonomy and wide-ranging civil liberty under Chinese rule.

Worst of all is the timing, as Beijing fights to win its bid to stage the 2008 Summer Olympics in the Chinese capital.

As the International Olympic Committee prepares to make its choice this Friday on who will host the Games, the mutterings about Beijing's human-rights abuses are growing louder, which could reduce the chance of Beijing winning the right to host the global sporting event.

Beijing lost its fight for the 2000 Games by two votes, largely because of the memory of the Tiananmen Square student massacre.

The two-year-old Falun Gong crackdown clearly illustrates the failure of an overwhelmingly centralised, top-down, [party' name omitted]-style government. It also shows that the human spirit, with its cravings for the divine and the intangible, can never be crushed by oppressive state forces, no matter how extensive the repressive apparatus or how brutal and ruthless the oppressor.

Cary Huang is China editor for the Hong Kong iMail

http://www.hk-imail.com/inews/public/article_v.cfm?articleid=25419&intcatid=6