A group of members of the Falun Gong, the spiritual movement outlawed in China as a cult, kicked off a 400km walk across Taiwan yesterday, calling for the release of the movement's adherents jailed in China.
Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "SOS," 21 Falun Gong practitioners set off on the two-week walk which will take them from the nation's capital of Taipei to the southern port city of Kaohsiung.
"We hope China will stop persecuting Falun Gong members and release them," said the group's Taiwan leader Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪).
"We want to expose China's evil deeds," said Chang, a professor of economics at the elite National Taiwan University.
The group has intensified its activities overseas in recent months and staged a walk across the US as well as a hunger strike in Hong Kong.
Falun Gong says that more than 50,000 practitioners in China have been sent to prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals since Beijing banned the group as a cult in 1999.
Human rights groups estimate some 200 Falun Gong adherents have died from torture during detention.
Beijing says that the group is trying to overthrow the Communist Party and has caused the death of at least 1,800 people either by suicide or refusal of medical treatment.
Falun Gong mixes traditional Chinese breathing exercises with Taoist and Buddhist elements of meditation and philosophy.
Its practitioners extol its powers of healing both physical and emotional ailments.
Beijing outlawed Falun Gong in 1999 after thousands of members laid siege to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound to demand official recognition.
Falun Gong says it has approximately 100,000 followers in Taiwan.
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