BEIJING (AP) - Police detained at least six people on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing on Friday, the second anniversary of the start of China's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group.
It wasn't immediately clear whether those detained were Falun Gong members, but the square has been the site of repeated protests by the group, especially on key anniversaries.
Reporters saw one man chased, tackled and dragged into a police van. A man who was with him was wrestled to the ground and taken away.
In a different part of the square, police took away more people in a van. Bystanders there said they saw four people detained.
Officers were stationed throughout the square, which was packed mostly with tour groups and schoolchildren on field trips. Blue and white police vans moved through the crowd, honking loudly. Busloads of officers stood by.
Last year, police broke up scattered protests and rounded up more than 90 people on the square. Most had demonstrated in small groups, using small banners, by sitting in the lotus position or by raising their arms to form an O-shape over their heads - a popular meditation pose for the sect.
Friday was the second anniversary of the arrests of 70 leaders of the group, which prompted protests by tens of thousands of followers in Beijing. It was followed two days later by a ban on the group, which the government labeled an ``evil cult.''
China's leaders worried that the group's size and organizational strength could challenge communist rule.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with its mix of slow-motion exercises, Eastern philosophies and the ideas of founder Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk. By some estimates, its followers at one point outnumbered the 64.5 million members of the Chinese Communist Party.
The group has since taken root in the United States, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. Taiwan is believed to have the biggest following outside China, with 100,000 adherents. Li lives in the United States.
Since the crackdown began, thousands of followers have been sent to labor camps, where officials say they are given counseling to persuade them to leave the group.
The government has accused the sect of cheating followers and causing thousands of deaths, mostly of practitioners who it maintains refused medical treatment in accordance with what it claims are the group's teachings. Officials claim followers have killed themselves in the belief they will go to heaven.
In a commentary published Friday the People's Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper, said the group ``lacked humanity.''
The newspaper and the official Xinhua News Agency said the death of a Falun Gong member in Sichuan province in the southwest showed the group's practices were harmful.
Liu Renfang, a 52-year-old farmer, had been suffering a long illness but refused to go to the hospital. When she died, fellow practitioners threw her body in a river to destroy evidence and protect the sect, the media said.
China's crackdown has drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups. They say detainees are denied sleep, sexually abused, beaten, shocked with electric batons and exposed to extreme cold by guards under pressure to make them renounce the group.
``During the past two years, the suppression hasn't stopped but has escalated and gotten worse,'' said Kan Hung-cheung, a Falun Gong spokesman in Hong Kong, where the group remains legal.
Followers in Hong Kong issued a plea Friday for an end to China's efforts to eradicate Falun Gong. About 160 adherents practiced their slow-motion exercises outside Hong Kong government offices, some wearing yellow T-shirts bearing the phrase, ``Help stop the killing in China.''
Falun Gong says at least 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 1999, more than half of them in the past six months. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy says it has confirmed 153 deaths in the crackdown.
AP-NY-07-20-01 0601EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.