Electronic Telegraph: Chinese police swift to crush [group]'s protest

CHINESE police violently quashed protests by followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square yesterday, arresting up to 700 people.

Police arrest a member of the Falun Gong movement during a demonstration in Tiananmen Square

Small groups of demonstrators were dragged away by police after they tried to meditate or wave banners to protest against an 18-month-old ban on the movement. One man who struggled with police officers as they tried to push him on to a bus was beaten on the head, causing heavy bleeding. Street sweepers were ordered immediately to clean away the blood.

Before noon, buses full of mostly female and middle-aged protesters were driven away from the square in police custody. Many of those inside the buses shouted Falun Gong slogans and several tossed the [group]'s distinctive yellow banners out of the bus windows.

In a scene enacted at Tiananmen Square on every major holiday since mid-1999, hundreds of uniformed and plain-clothed police searched among tourists for protesters and dragged them away.

Falun Gong's civil disobedience campaign, probably the most stubborn the Communist regime has faced in 51 years of crushing dissent, has resulted in scores of deaths due to police beatings and the jailing in labour camps of tens of thousands of people. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise with a doctrine loosely rooted in Buddhist and Taoist teachings.