Falun Gong

BEIJING - In an attempt to further discredit Falun Gong as crazy and dangerous, China's government-run news media aired stunning video images last evening of the five purported members of the banned group who immolated themselves in Tiananmen Square earlier this month. In one sequence, police armed with fire extinguishers surrounded a woman who resembled a human torch with fire pouring several feet from her body. The force of their fire extinguishers appeared to knock her to the ground, where she collapsed in a charred heap as white clouds of flame retardant hung in the air. Another video clip, apparently taken by police with a video camera, showed a man identified as Wang Jindong sitting on the square in Falun Gong's favored lotus position and appearing to talk to himself.

BEIJING - Five members of the banned spiritual meditation group Falun Gong set themselves on fire yesterday in a suicide attempt at Tiananmen Square on the eve of Chinese New Year, according to Xinhua, China's government-run news service. A woman died, and four men were injured and taken to a hospital by police, said Xinhua, which blamed the act on "the heresy of Li Hongzhi, ringleader of the evil cult Falun Gong." Falun Gong members in Hong Kong denied that the group was behind the act, saying it ran counter to the lessons of compassion, tolerance and forbearance taught by Li, the group's exiled leader.

BEIJING - Members of at least 40 Protestant congregations on China's southeastern coast are looking to celebrate Christmas elsewhere this year after local officials destroyed their churches and places of worship. The demolition campaign is part of a crackdown that has claimed not only churches but also hundreds of privately built local temples for folk worship in Zhejiang Province, Chinese officials and state-run newspapers say. Most of the destruction appears to have occurred in the past month.

BEIJING -- A dozen years after China signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture, beating and torture of criminal suspects remains a widespread problem, according to a report scheduled for release today. Despite new laws, officials who use torture usually go undisciplined and courts continue to accept confessions extracted through beatings, the New York-based watchdog group Human Rights in China says in a 44-page brief. "Torture is rarely punished in China," the report says. "While providing impunity for officials who use physical violence, this reality also effectively encourages many law enforcement officials to rely on ill-treatment, rather than on proper investigative techniques to break cases."

BEIJING -- China's state-controlled media acknowledged for the first time yesterday the government's persistent difficulty in stamping out the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, even as fresh allegations emerged about police brutality toward its practitioners held in detention. Three jailed members of the movement have died as a result of beatings or hunger strikes in the past month, according to human rights groups and family members, bringing the total number of deaths to 15. The government has been mostly silent about Falun Gong in recent months, and the state media have never openly acknowledged the sporadic silent protests by small groups of its members on Tiananmen Square over the past nine months.

BEIJING -- The Year of the Dragon arrived amid violence on Tiananmen Square, but hundreds of millions of Chinese elsewhere greeted the new lunar year happily yesterday with fireworks and raucous celebrations. More than 50 Falun Gong members were kicked, beaten and detained during the first few minutes of the new year on the square in central Beijing as police broke up the biggest protest in months by the outlawed spiritual group. Trouble began shortly before midnight, when dozens of members of the sect emerged from a pedestrian tunnel that opens onto the square and sat down in protest.

BEIJING -- Three men and a woman accused of being top leaders of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement were given prison sentences yesterday ranging from seven to 18 years, including the two harshest terms for Chinese political dissidents in five years. The severe sentences, issued by a Beijing court after a one-day trial, and their prominent announcement on national television were clearly intended to show the authorities' determination to crush Falun Gong. The movement has gained millions of enthusiastic followers in recent years.

MACAU -- China took back possession of Macau from Portugal yesterday, vowing that Taiwan would be next in line for reunification with the mainland.Reclaiming Macau after 442 years of Portuguese rule, President Jiang Zemin explicitly linked the turnover to Chinese expectations that Taiwan soon would agree to be ruled by China under the same "one country, two systems" formula applied to Hong Kong and Macau.The successful return of Macau and Hong Kong has given China "the confidence and ability to solve the Taiwan issue by an early date and realize China's complete reunification," Jiang told 2,500 dignitaries gathered in a giant tent on reclaimed land jutting into the South China Sea.The ceremony, modeled on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, marked the end of European colonialism in Asia and Portugal's departure from its first and last colony.

BEIJING -- One state's honorary citizen is another country's "evil mastermind."So it appeared last month after a polite gesture by the Baltimore mayor's office and the governor's office ignited rage in -- of all places -- the People's Republic of China.This year, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke named an official day for Chinese citizen Li Hongzhi, the leader of the spiritual meditation group Falun Gong. The governor's office gave Li an honorary state citizenship certificate. Ordinarily, such gestures of goodwill go unnoticed by the executives who proclaim them and most of the rest of the world.

BEIJING -- An intensifying crackdown against the banned Falun Gong movement has sent its practitioners under cover and led Chinese authorities to schedule a rare news conference in Beijing's Great Hall of the People today to explain why they consider the group so dangerous.The repression could become a serious irritant in U.S.-China relations, a Western diplomat warned. Already, he said, "Falun Gong has become a bigger deal than Taiwan" for China's government.Its leaders consider demonstrations by the popular movement's followers a brazen and at least symbolically serious challenge to the Communist Party's authority.