Sect Detainees Said to Include China Officials

The Chinese government has arrested nearly 1,200 government officials among the thousands of people it has rounded up for associating with a banned meditation group, a rights group reported Monday.

The officials were being held in schools outside a northern Chinese city, forced to read Communist Party literature and pressured to give up their association with Falun Gong, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported from Hong Kong.

The officials, who were detained Saturday, were not allowed any outside contacts, even by telephone, and were ordered to submit written guarantees that they would break with the sect, the report said, citing undisclosed sources in China.

The campaign was expected to extend to 3,000 lower-ranking local government officials in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, about 180 miles southwest of Beijing, the rights group said.

China’s Communist leaders banned Falun Gong on Thursday, accusing it of trying to develop political power. Falun Gong leaders have denied any political ambitions and denied they organized protests that erupted last week after authorities reportedly arrested leading sect members.

Falun Gong, founded by Li Hongzhi, who now lives in New York, draws on martial arts, Buddhism and Taoism. Members say its goals are physical and mental fitness and high moral standards, and they deny that it is either a religion or a political movement.

Police throughout China have ransacked homes of Falun Gong practitioners and confiscated books, videotapes and posters about the group, according to Falun Gong Internet sites based in the United States. Some detainees have been forced to pay heavy fines, these reports say.

China’s state-controlled newspapers claimed successes Monday in the government crackdown, saying people were turning in Falun Gong materials and renouncing the organization. Television news showed inspectors pulling the group’s books and tapes from shops and newsstands and featured testimonials from people who said they no longer believed in Falun Gong.

The state-run New China News Agency said, “In fact, the so-called ‘truth, kindness and forbearance’ principle preached by Li Hongzhi has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve.”

China does not allow independent religious or political groups for fear they might challenge the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.