AP: China Detains 7 [Falun Gong Practitioners during a] Protest

Thu Mar 7,2002

BEIJING - China detained seven foreign members of Falun Gong during a protest Thursday near the annual meeting of the national legislature.

The protest lasted only a few seconds outside the former imperial palace in central Beijing. The protesters held up a banner with the group's name and shouted "Falun Dafa is good!" in Chinese before police grabbed them. Falun Dafa is another name for the sect.

Curious Chinese tourists watched as the five men and two women were loaded into a police van outside the palace on the northern edge of Tiananmen Square and driven away.

Police also detained two female bystanders, one of them a foreigner. An Australian television producer who filmed the women being questioned was briefly detained and his tape confiscated.

It was the fifth protest since November on or near the square by foreign members of Falun Gong, which China banned in 1999 [...].

The protest Thursday occurred despite heightened security in Beijing to prevent demonstrations during the 11-day meeting of the National People's Congress, which meets at the Great Hall of the People next to Tiananmen Square.

The square was closed to the public earlier in the week but was reopened Thursday. Dozens of police patrolled the vast plaza, stopping passers-by to check their identification.

The protest took place under the portrait of communist founder Mao Tse-tung on Tiananmen Gate, the southern entrance to the former palace.

A statement released by Falun Gong in New York said the detained protesters were Australians. It said they wanted to "stage an appeal ... for the Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in China."

The Australian Embassy in Beijing said it couldn't confirm their nationalities.

Tiananmen Square was once the site of almost daily demonstrations by Chinese Falun Gong protesters. But a relentless, often brutal, crackdown has scared away or driven underground Chinese followers who once numbered in the millions.

Thousands of members have been detained, and Falun Gong supporters abroad contend that more than 350 have been killed. Chinese authorities deny abusing anyone, though they say some members have died in hunger strikes, from refusing medical help or in suicides.

Other protests by foreigners on the square have involved Americans, Europeans, Japanese and people from more than a dozen other countries. In the biggest to date, 53 people were detained and expelled from China after a demonstration Feb. 14. Some complained they were beaten by police.

Also Thursday, officials in northeastern China said Falun Gong activists broke into the transmission system of a local cable television company and used it to broadcast material about the group.

The broadcast Tuesday evening in Changchun, the capital of Jilin province, lasted about 10 minutes, according to a spokeswoman for the cable company.

She said she didn't know technical details and wouldn't say how many people might have seen the broadcast. She wouldn't give her name.

One person was arrested, said a Changchun city government spokesman who also declined to give his name.

In Hong Kong, the husband of a Falun Gong member said Thursday that his wife was arrested while visiting relatives on the mainland.

Lui Pak-fung is awaiting trial on unspecified charges while Chinese authorities are trying to force her to renounce the group, said her husband, O Man-tsan. O said he had appealed to the Hong Kong government to push for her release.

Police who arrested Lui last month also seized Falun Gong books, according to a Hong Kong spokeswoman for the group, Sharon Xu.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020307/ap_on_re_as/china_banned_sect_36