HONG KONG - A court in western China has sentenced six leaders of a Buddhist group to jail for terms of three to eight years for illegal religious activities, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said on Friday.
The court in Xian sentenced the members of the group, whose name was given as "Guanyin Famen," for distributing pamphlets and organising meetings between 1997 and 2000, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.
The sentences came just days before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights considers a U.S. resolution accusing China of rights abuses.
But China is likely to fend off a U.N. vote on the resolution, as it has every year since 1989.
The Guanyin Famen group was founded in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1988 and later spread to China, where it is estimated to have 500,000 followers, the rights group said.
Although China's constitution allows freedom of religion, the government restricts practise to sanctioned organisations and registered places of worship.
06:05 04-13-01
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