Wednesday November 21, 2001

Western supporters of the banned Falun Gong [group] took the Chinese police by surprise yesterday by staging a protest in Tiananmen Square where they held a sit-in and chanted [verses]. Many Chinese Falun Gong supporters have been arrested for demonstrating in the square in Beijing since the group was banned more than two years ago by the authorities, who see non-official groups as a threat. Some foreign supporters have picked up the baton. After yesterday's sit-in, 35 foreigners were ordered to leave the country, [...]. The westerners had arrived as tourists. Mostly in their 20s and 30s, they came from 10 countries including Britain, France, Sweden and the US.

They went to Tiananmen and sat down with their eyes closed and hands joined together in the [group's] meditative posture. One protester ran in circles near bemused Chinese onlookers, shouting "Falun Gong is good!" Their demonstration coincided - apparently by accident - with a Chinese propaganda coup: a jailed Chinese-American Falun Gong activist has recanted in the national media. Teng Chunyan told national TV and the official news agency that she now realises [Jiang Zemin regime's slanderous words omitted]. Earlier this year the US House of Representatives appealed for the release of Teng, a New York acupuncturist, from a three-year prison sentence for alleged "spying." A statement issued by the [group's] supporters in London yesterday said that the people arrested in Tiananmen Square were "standing up for the freedom of belief of Falun Gong practitioners in China". It alleges that more than 100,000 [group] followers have been arrested and tens of thousands thrown into labour camps. China acknowledges that several thousand have been committed to reform institutions, usually without trial.