06/30/2002

BBC Monitoring

Text of report by Radio TV Hong Kong audio web site on 30 June

About 200 Falun Gong practitioners are meditating outside Wanchai Tower, calling for an end to the persecution of fellow [practitioners] on the mainland. The group began its exercises at midday [0400 GMT] and will continue until tomorrow evening.

However, the group is unlikely to be seen by any of the visiting mainland leaders, as they are being kept well away from tomorrow morning's flag-raising ceremony on the Wanchai waterfront [marking the anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule]. A spokesman, (Ho Yi-han), spoke to Penny Tang.

[Ho] Around 200 of us are meditating outside the Wanchai Tower to appeal for the immediate termination of the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in mainland China.

[Tang] Are you hopeful that your meditation exercises will be seen by the mainland leaders who are in town?

[Ho] I'm afraid not, but there are initially two aims for our appeals. The first is to appeal directly to [President] Jiang. The second is we want to reach the conscience of those good people all around the world and hope that they would give us a hand in stopping this persecution in mainland China.