China defended yesterday its crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, saying the 18-month drive condemned abroad for its ruthlessness enjoyed widespread public support and was based on Chinese law.
A statement by China's cabinet, the latest salvo in an intensifying propaganda war against Falun Gong, did not mention a weekend rally in Hong Kong at which 1,000 supporters from around the world appealed for an end to the crackdown.
In a bid to address frequent reports Beijing was persecuting religious believers, the State Council Information Office said Falun Gong was a "social cancer."
The statement said 242 organizers of the sect had been jailed and some "stubborn elements" who had broken laws against illegal demonstrations had been sent to labor re-education camps.
The arrests and detentions "were not because these people were practicing Falun Gong, but because they had engaged in illegal activities and violated China's laws," said the statement, carried on the official Xinhua news agency.
The crackdown -- launched in July 1999, three months after a protest in which 10,000 Falun Gong members surrounded China's leadership compound -- was triggered by complaints by local authorities and ordinary citizens going back to 1996, it said.
"People from all segments of society and the masses had voiced strong complaints that Falun Gong was destroying families, endangering the physical and spiritual health of followers and threatening social order," it said.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, preaches a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese breathing exercises. It has shocked the Communist Party by its persistence and ability to organize a mass movement.
China banned Falun Gong in July 1999, calling it an "evil cult" which brainwashed and cheated its followers, and accuses the movement of causing as many as 1,600 deaths among practitioners.
But scenes of Chinese police beating elderly Falun Gong adherents broadcast around the world have sparked international condemnation, sullying Beijing's image as it campaigns to host the 2008 Olympic Games.
About 1,000 Falun Gong followers gathered in Hong Kong on Sunday denounced what they said was China's campaign of "evil persecution" against the group, for which they blamed Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
The supporters met in Hong Kong's City Hall, which is owned by the Hong Kong government, in defiance of the mainland leaders.
Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, which has retained a high degree of autonomy since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in mid-1997.
China has said little about the rally, but unleashed a new media campaign against the movement in advance of it.
Twelve people who had come for the weekend meeting were denied entry to Hong Kong and nine of them said in a statement immigration officials told them they were held because they came for the conference.
The Immigration Department said no one had been barred from entry because of their beliefs.
China has declared victory over Falun Gong repeatedly, but the group has staged almost daily protests in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing demanding official recognition as a religion.
Yesterday's cabinet statement acknowledged that "stubborn elements from Falun Gong, incited by Li Hongzhi (李宏志) and the evil cult organization, relentlessly come to Tiananmen Square to make trouble."
Last week, state media published a barrage of criticism of Falun Gong and Li, its exiled leader, accusing them of being a "cheap tool" of Western forces trying to topple the Communist Party. The group says some 50,000 members have been detained and many sent to labor camps without trial since Beijing banned it in July 1999.
The cabinet statement said only those followers who had broken Chinese laws were given re-education through labor sentences. Many were given reduced sentences or home detention as part of a policy to "educate and rescue as many as possible."
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