Wednesday, 26-Jun-2002 6:50AM
BEIJING, June 26 (AFP) - [Practitioners] of the [suppressed] Falun Gong spiritual movement have [tapped into] several Chinese TV networks in recent days as they fight their latest propaganda battle with Beijing, officials and a Hong Kong-based rights group said Wednesday.
Viewers near Yantai city in east China's Shandong province were surprised in the middle of prime-time Tuesday when the message "Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is good" appeared on their screens, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
"We received calls from the public," said a spokesman for an office in Yantai in charge of dealing with the Falun Gong.
"They said that at about 7 pm (1100 GMT) a blurred image appeared on their screens for between 10 and 20 seconds," the spokesman, surnamed Zhang, told AFP.
The incident happened only two days after a similar event in Laiyang county, also in Shandong.
Beginning from 7:10 pm (1110 GMT) on Sunday, China Central Television's channel 3 was interrupted for 15 minutes with the same message, according to the Hong Kong-based group.
An official with Laiyang police contacted by AFP on Wednesday confirmed that the episode did indeed take place.
The Hong Kong-based group reported unconfirmed [claims] that a similar interruption of programming took place for two minutes Wednesday morning in central China's Hunan province, but provided no further details.
Sophie Xiao, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for the Falun Gong, said she had heard similar [claims] of recent attempts to get the group's message across to Chinese TV viewers.
The activity could very well have taken place, as Falun Gong includes members from all walks of life, including people with special technical expertise, she said.
While high-profile protests by Chinese [practitioners] have become less frequent in recent months, there have been several reports about [practitioners] trying to reach a large audience by [tapping into] TV networks.
In April, the group attempted to broadcast a film denouncing persecution of its [practitioners] in the northeast city of Harbin, and later said it had been successful.
A 20-minute broadcast of Falun Gong films took place in northeastern Jilin province in March, and in January a broadcast promoting the group went out on a cable TV station in southwestern Chongqing municipality.
Sophie Xiao, the Falungong spokeswoman, said the broadcasts were aimed at "making people think" and serve as an antidote to the government's "one-sided propaganda".
It was a deliberate tactic to simply broadcast a simple message -- "Falun Dafa is good" -- rather than engage in more complex arguments, she said.
"We don't want to say anything against the Chinese government or people," she said. "We just want to tell people that we're a spiritual movement."
Since Falun Gong was [suppressed] in July 1999, tens of thousands of adherents have been jailed or sent to labor camp, activists say.
The group's New York [information center] has alleged that up to 200 [editors note: currently up to over 400 deaths] [practitioners] have died in police custody, mostly from police beatings and maltreatment.
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