AP: Police Arrest Falun Gong Followers

Today: May 11, 2000 at 8:45:25 PDT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING (AP) -- Marking the birthday of their movement's founder, dozens of followers of the banned Falun Gong sect tried to unfurl banners and meditate in Tiananmen Square today, meeting swift, sometimes violent arrest from police.

One woman ran from a clutch of plainclothes security officers, only to be tackled and sent sprawling on the square's paving stones. Police kicked several followers after they, like the others detained, were forced inside a van to be driven off the square.

By midmorning, police had detained at least 50 followers who mounted small but sustained protests across the square in central Beijing. Plainclothes and uniformed security officers raced from side to side to quell the outbursts of civil disobedience. Police vans circled the plaza.

The frenzy resembled the confrontation between sect members and police on April 25 when followers gathered for the first anniversary of a demonstration by 10,000 practitioners. That protest had shocked China's leaders, and three months later they banned the group as a public menace and a threat to Communist Party rule.

Despite 9 1/2 months of repression, a smear campaign in the state media and the jailing of thousands, Falun Gong followers have continued to stage protests nearly every day in Tiananmen Square - although not on the scale of today's demonstration.