Police arrest
Westerners demonstrating in
support of banned Falun Gong sect
2001.11.21 AP,
BEIJING
As hundreds of Chinese looked on in surprise, police detained
more than a dozen Westerners who unfurled a banner in Tiananmen
Square yesterday afternoon and chanted slogans in support of
the banned Falun Gong sect.
A group of Westerners, most in their 20s and 30s, had been
talking among themselves for nearly an hour when they sat down
shortly after 2pm in the lotus position, their eyes closed and
their hands together as if in prayer. "Purge the evil,"
some chanted in Chinese, a common Falun Gong invocation.
Police vans quickly encircled the group, and uniformed officers
began separating the ones whose arms were interlocked. Group
members-both men and women-resisted for a time before police
managed to load them into vans and drive off.
It was not immediately clear whether the demonstrators were
arrested or charged with any crime.
The site they chose for their 10-minute protest, Tiananmen
Square, has long been guarded closely by heavy contingents of
Chinese police, not only because of 1989 student demonstrations
and the subsequent bloody crackdown there, but because of previous
Falun Gong protests in recent years. It is the most visible-and
controversial-site in China.
Yesterday, authorities seemed to have advance word that something
was imminent; some moved into position at 2pm as if anticipating
problems.
When they made the arrests, they used none of the rougher tactics
often employed in arresting Chinese followers of Falun Gong-which
have included punches, facial kicks and beatings with police
nightsticks.
Chinese authorities have pursued Falun Gong followers since
the government outlawed the group in July 1999.
The government says Falun Gong is
an "evil cult" that has caused more than 1,600 deaths,
mostly by encouraging followers to use meditation instead of
medicine to cure ailments.
Falun Gong says almost 300 followers have died in custody during
the crackdown and that many more have been tortured and abused.
Thousands of followers have been sent to prisons and labor camps.
At the demonstration yesterday, Chinese looked on, agape, as
police swooped in. "Foreigners," one said.
The nationalities of those detained were not immediately clear,
though one wore a T-shirt depicting the Canadian flag and another
carried a German flag.
One demonstrator broke from the group briefly and ran around
in circles near onlookers, wielding a banner in the sect's trademark
yellow color. "America knows, China knows, the world knows
Falun Gong is good," the man said. Police stopped him shortly
afterward.
There were no visible signs of tightened security in Tiananmen
Square after the incident was over.