(31 Oct 1999) English/Nat
China has passed new anti-cult legislation in an attempt to eradicate the banned Falun Gong movement.
Their action paves the way for Falun Gong leaders to be given lengthy prison terms and possibly the death penalty.
Police have been ordered to smash all cult activity, and reports from Beijing say they have quelled the week-long series of protests by defiant but peaceful Falun Gong members.
But in Hong Kong, where the spiritual group is still allowed to exist, the group is stepping up its activities to draw attention to the fate of its followers on the mainland.
After Friday's silent demonstration outside the central government offices in Hong Kong, Falun Gong followers chose a Sunday afternoon for another demonstration on Hong Kong's peak, an area popular as a weekend day-out destination.
Members of the banned spiritual group are arrested on the mainland but in Hong Kong they are still free to follow their beliefs and to demonstrate in public.
For six days, they have been maintaining a small vigil outside the offices of the New China News Agency.
But they say they intend to increase the scale and frequency of events like this, designed to increase public awareness of their belief and of the persecution they suffer in mainland China.
Yesterday China's National People's Congress passed a new law that increases the power of the police and the courts to prosecute followers of spiritual beliefs that the Chinese government has dismissed as "cults".
In passing this law, the National People's Congress exhorted police and the courts to be "on full alert of cult activities and to smash them rigorously."
By tightening the law on cults, the communist government speeded the crackdown toward trials of principal members already in custody.
But the need for new measures shows how threatened Chinese leaders feel by Falun Gong, the alternatives it offers and how undaunted its followers remain more than three months into a ban on the widely popular group.
Although defiant, members are shocked at the Chinese move to legislate against them.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I'm shocked, I'm very very shocked, I think all practitioners feel very disappointed with the government. So many people practice Falun Dafa in China and we are all good people, and the government is doing this. And we are very disappointed and shocked and it is time we really need to speak out to the world and tell people what we really are."
SUPER CAPTION: Belinda Pang, Falun Gong Member
The Hong Kong government has not made any indication that it will follow mainland policy.
As part of the mini-constitution put in place after the 1997 handover, Hong Kong's citizens are guaranteed the same religious freedoms they enjoyed under British rule.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I'm not worried here because in Hong Kong we have one country, two systems. I trust the government, I trust the system, that we will allow us the freedom of speech, freedom of pursuing our belief, freedom of practising Falun Dafa."
SUPER CAPTION: Belinda Pang, Falun Gong Member
Some Hong Kong Falun Gong followers have claimed that they are being monitored and followed.
A spokesman said that the number of followers in Hong Kong has dropped by thirty per cent since Beijing outlawed the group on the mainland three months ago.
It is estimated that there are now about five hundred Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong.
The group's faith is a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, meditation and breathing exercises.
The cult claims to have one hundred (m) million followers worldwide.
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