Saturday July 22 9:43 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of members of the outlawed Falun Gong on Saturday marked the first anniversary of China's ban on their spiritual movement with protests in Tiananmen Square that were quickly suppressed by police.

Sporadic small protests erupted throughout the day at the square, which was swarming with police. Nearby police holding cells were overflowing with detained followers, who continued to be carted off in white vans until dusk.

The largest burst of agitation started at around 9 a.m. (0100 GMT), when small groups of Falun Gong followers began simultaneous protests in different parts of the vast square.

Under blue summer skies, one group of around 25 people managed to unfurl a banner and hold off angry plainclothes police for several minutes before being overwhelmed.

About half a dozen of them clung to the yellow banner -- urging people to practice Falun Gong -- and were beaten and kicked by policemen before being forced into a police van.

The policemen even beat the protesters with their walkie-talkies as local and foreign tourists looked on.

Within half an hour, at least 10 police vans each crammed with between 15 and 25 Falun Gong supporters were driven away.

China's Communist Party has declared the group an ``evil cult'' and accuses it of undermining social stability.

Long-Standing Protest

Falun Gong has staged small scale demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, where a pro-democracy movement was crushed in 1989 with large loss of life, almost daily since it was banned.

Rarely, however, have they managed to raise a banner because police usually pounce before they can unfurl it.

On Saturday, protesters tried to unfurl banners. They were swiftly seized by some of the hundreds of police, many in plain clothes and some masquerading as photographers or vendors.

Each time the police swooped, a flock of Chinese tourists was drawn to the area. On at least one occasion, a policeman shouted at the onlookers to go away.

``You have seen nothing here,'' he screamed at them.

Falun Gong, which combines meditation with a doctrine rooted loosely in Buddhist and Daoist teachings, first rattled the atheist Communist Party with a 10,000-member protest in Beijing on April 25, 1999.

The movement says it has no political aims and its protests are aimed at gaining official recognition and freedom to follow its precepts openly.

China blames the group for 1,500 deaths by suicide or refusal to accept medical care in favor of faith in the teachings of U.S.-based leader Li Hongzhi.

West Critical

The crackdown has drawn widespread criticism from Western governments for its violations of rights enshrined in China' constitution and U.N. anti-torture and human rights treaties.

U.S. Falun Gong practitioners say tens of thousands of group members had been arrested or detained since the ban, and at least 5,000 sent to labor camps without trial.

Human rights groups have documented 24 Falun Gong deaths in police custody in the past year, mostly from beatings.

The Communist Party has declared ``decisive victory'' in its crackdown on the homegrown movement which it accuses of being linked to anti-China activists overseas.

But the China Daily, the party's English-language mouthpiece, signaled on Saturday Beijing's frustration at the continued resistance of the group.

``Li Hongzhi, the cult's leader, and his unrepentant followers have refused to take their defeat gracefully,'' the paper said. ``They have not ceased to encourage people to confront the Chinese government.''

The government says the group's membership has dwindled to about 40,000 from two million. Falun Gong says it has tens of millions of followers in China and 40 other countries.