Police yesterday maintained some of the tightest security in a decade around central Beijing to prevent Falun Gong protests, as the new US administration condemned China's crackdown on the movement.
For the third day in a row thousands of plain clothes and uniformed police encircled Tiananmen Square in the center of the city to prevent a repeat of Tuesday's mass suicide attempt by five protesters.
China says the five were members of the Falun Gong sect and that one woman died and the four others were injured.
Tourists and locals took to the streets of the capital but many were stopped from entering Tiananmen Square by lines of police demanding identity cards.
Officers checked through bags and patted people down, and in some cases demanded people publicly condemn the spiritual movement before allowing them onto the square, which is considered the symbolic heart of China.
On the huge concourse undercover officers approached any dawdling tourists and demanded to know what they were doing and if they were Falun Gong practitioners.
But unlike the previous few days when several isolated group members managed to breach security to make brief protests, there was little sign of activity yesterday.
"I haven't seen very many arrests on the square during the holiday," a worker on the square said.
China considers the Falun Gong "an evil cult" similar to Japan's Aum sect, which carried out a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. It says the group is responsible for causing the deaths of 1,600 followers by convincing them to refuse medical treatment.
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