China Quells New Protest by Banned Sect

Authorities carted off dozens of followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group as they tried to protest Tuesday in Tiananmen Square to mark the anniversary of their massive demonstration in the Chinese capital last year.

Police pounced on protesters who arrived in the square throughout the day trying to unfurl yellow banners or engage in the slow-motion exercises taught by the group. Witnesses told of swift and occasionally violent action by uniformed and plainclothes officers who dragged sect members off to waiting buses.

Beginning in the early morning, security was tight across the vast plaza in downtown Beijing. Nearby, extra officers patrolled the sidewalks outside the Zhongnanhai government leadership compound, which was at the center of last year’s huge rally.

But Falun Gong adherents were difficult to pick out among the hordes of tourists who daily throng the square, the symbol of Chinese rule since imperial times. Demonstrators kept security forces on their toes by popping up in different parts of the plaza--a sign, perhaps, of a more concerted effort than the scattershot protests that have become almost a daily fixture here. It was impossible to gauge the exact number of those detained Tuesday.

Authorities outlawed Falun Gong in July, calling it an “evil cult” and its exiled leader, Li Hongzhi, a money-hungry fraud bent on subverting the state.

Since then, in the face of a sustained political campaign on a scale not seen here since the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989, many members have given up the public practice of the group’s brand of deep-breathing and slow-motion exercises.

But the government’s extreme measures have also spawned a hard core of Falun Gong adherents who continue to converge on Beijing to press for the right to practice their beliefs. Many have been arrested several times; detainees from overseas have been deported.

In a rare admission, state media acknowledged last week that despite the heavy crackdown, Falun Gong practitioners continue “causing trouble on and around Tiananmen Square in central Beijing nearly every day,” particularly on holidays and major official occasions.

“Our struggle [against the group] will continue,” Sun Yuxi, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told reporters Tuesday.

Falun Gong’s supporters have appealed for international pressure on Beijing to end the crackdown, “one of the largest, harshest and most arbitrary of persecutions in modern history,” the group said in a prepared statement.

The group contends that 35,000 adherents have been either arrested or detained, that 5,000 more have been shipped off to labor camps without trial and that at least 15 have been persecuted literally to death, in some cases by torture, which is illegal in China.

“There’s been a major injustice done in the world,” said Gail Rachlin, a New York-based spokeswoman for the group. “All we’re asking is just to sit down and dialogue [with the Chinese government] so we can resolve this peacefully.”

Beijing blames Falun Gong for the deaths of at least 1,500 followers who either were suicides or died after rejecting medical treatment in hopes of experiencing the miraculous healing many group members have reported. Four of the movement’s leaders were handed stiff prison sentences in December for causing the deaths and for leaking “state secrets.”

The group denies the charges and describes its mission as one of “truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance.” Falun Gong blends traditional Taoist and Buddhist practices with a conservative moral code that condemns rock music, extramarital sex and other manifestations of what its leader, “Master Li,” calls an increasingly wicked age.

Li, 48, has been living in New York for several years but has not appeared in public since shortly after China issued the ban on his group.

A minor mystery has recently sprung up as to his whereabouts, the only clue being a photograph of Li posted on the group’s Web site (https://www.falundafa.org). The photo, said to date from January, shows Li meditating on a rocky ledge at an unidentified location, “quietly watching his disciples and people in the world from the mountains.”

“It’s just not the right time” for Li to speak out, said Rachlin, who added that she has not been in contact with Li.

Falun Gong claims 70 million adherents worldwide, but experts believe the real figure is far smaller.

Practitioners in China include retirees, laid-off workers, college professors and even some Communist Party cadres. People across China have flocked to religious and quasi-religious groups in recent years in response to the decline of Communist ideology.

The movement went largely unnoticed until last April 25, when 10,000 followers staged a silent sit-in at Zhongnanhai to protest allegedly unfair treatment in another city. The show of force unnerved the leadership, which declared war on the group three months later.