September 24, 2002, Tuesday

The leader of Taiwan's Falun Gong spiritual group on Tuesday denied knowledge of Taiwan Falun Gong members interrupting Chinese television programmes.

"There are tens of thousands of Falun Gong [practitioners] in Taiwan and many of them I do not know. I don't know if some of them interrupted Chinese TV broadcasts. Our group has never organized this," Chang Ching-hsi, director of Taiwan Falun Dafa Society, said by telephone. "But since China has kept the Chinese people in the dark about Falun Gong, we welcome any attempt to tell the truth to the Chinese people," he said.

"We admire the 20 mainland Falun Gong followers who were sentenced by Chinese courts for [using] cable TV networks to broadcast Falun Gong videos," he said.

Chang, 56, an economics professor at the National Taiwan University, is the leader of Taiwan's Falun Gong group.

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The first [using] of Chinese TV by Falun Gong members occurred on January 1. The latest occurred between September 9-21 when China Central TV (CCTV), China Education TV (CETV) and several other provincial TV stations were affected.

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