AFP: China steps up Falun Gong crackdown with new guidelines (Excerpt)

Monday June 11, 1:46 PM

BEIJING, June 11 (AFP) - China on Monday implemented new guidelines aimed at tightening its crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group and stamping out the group's lower-profile activities.

The directive was issued by China's top court and came after the group drastically reduced its demonstrations on Beijing's Tiananmen Square because too many practitioners were getting detained.

Falun Gong adherents have instead quietly bombarded residential compounds with mass mailing campaigns and stuck leaflets under people's doors in hopes of gaining public support to fight the two-year ban against the group.

Police have been detaining people for these activities, but were not clear which laws they could use for prosecution, Falun Gong members told AFP.

The directive cites specific laws police, prosecutors and judges can use to punish Falun Gong members.

For example, practitioners who attack President Jiang Zemin in their propaganda material or spray-paint names of police officers who were especially brutal to detained practitioners can be prosecuted using defamation or libel laws.

The directive also seems to step up the stakes by saying Falun Gong adherents who gather or provide information on the government's crackdown to overseas groups can be prosecuted for spying or stealing state secrets -- serious offenses punishable by long prison terms.

[...]

Hong Kong-based Falun Gong spokesman Kam Hung-cheung said the new directive showed the government remained deeply worried about Falun Gong's strength.

"They have adopted very harsh tactics, inhumane methods, but they still couldn't suppress Falun Gong practitioners and their persistence," Kam said.

"They're tightening things step by step, but this also shows in many respects their suppression is not achieving results."

The group, which teaches clean living [...], was banned by Beijing in July 1999 as an [Chinese government's slanderous term omitted] after holding an unprecedented 10,000-strong protest in Beijing. Tens of thousands of members have since been detained, sent to labor camps, or imprisoned.

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