March 16, 2006 Thursday

FOLLOWERS of the meditation-based Falun Gong faith march through the streets of Wellington in protest against the torture, murder and suspected "organ harvesting" of fellow practitioners in China. A former Chinese spy alleged in a United States newspaper, the Epoch Times, this week that more than 6000 Falun Gong practitioners were being held in a secret concentration camp at Shenyang City in northeast China. The camp was dedicated to the persecution -- and possibly lucrative organ-harvesting -- of Falun Gong followers, the spy said. "Nobody has yet come out of it alive", he said. March organiser Gina Shakespear said the faith's growing popularity -- attracting about 100 million followers in the past seven years -- was [considered]a threat to China's ruling Communist party, which had recently had nine million people withdraw their membership. Falun Gong followers were forced to practise in secret.