China Bans Cults With Law Targeting Falun Gong Sect

China’s parliament passed a law today banning cults--aimed at the Falun Gong spiritual movement--and called on the legal system to “smash them rigorously,” the official New China News Agency reported.

“It calls on courts, prosecutors, police and administrative judicial organs to be on full alert for cult activities and smash them rigorously in accordance with the law,” the agency said.

The Falun Gong movement was outlawed by decree in July, and the report said the new law differentiated between leaders and adherents.

“Local governments are asked to take necessary measures to educate those deceived while punishing a small number of cult leaders and those who have committed crimes,” the report said.

Falun Gong members have been demonstrating all week outside the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square where the standing committee of the National People’s Congress met to discuss the law.

Several dozen members staged passive protests in the square again today and were taken away by police. But there was no repetition of the previous day’s events, when plainclothes men kicked, beat and dragged away protesters by the hair, witnesses said.

On Friday, the government displayed rougher tactics in its campaign to stamp out the group, hauling away at least 50 members.

As police rushed to round up Falun Gong members, a few demonstrators abandoned four days of quiet vigils and daringly unveiled a petition in Tiananmen Square asking Chinese leaders for tolerance.

The protest was fleeting. Police twisted one youth’s arm and dragged another by the hair into a clutch of officers. A third was tackled while trying to flee.

Those held were the latest of about 3,000 people that a Communist Party source said have been detained in Beijing this week.

The harsh tactics were part of a campaign of police sweeps and new anti-sect regulations aimed at vanquishing the group, the party source said on condition of anonymity.

The new measures underscored the Communist Party’s growing frustration with rank-and-file Falun Gong adherents and the party’s slipping hold on Chinese society.

Protesters seized from Tiananmen Square this week told police and party officials that they only want China’s leaders to understand Falun Gong and the benefits its meditation exercises and philosophy bring to health and morality, the party source said.

Outside United Nations headquarters in New York, about 100 Falun Gong demonstrators called on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday to intervene and defend the group’s rights. They also said they had reports that Chinese authorities were torturing Falun Gong members in China.