HONG KONG, China -- Human rights campaigners have attacked Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa for branding the Falun Gong spiritual movement an "evil cult."
They accuse him of siding with Beijing's communist leaders who have already banned the movement in mainland China.
Tung broke his silence on the group on Thursday, warning it would be closely monitored and prevented from exploiting Hong Kong's freedom in order to upset stability in the territory or provoke China.
He told a session of Hong Kong's 60-member legislative council the Falun Gong had some characteristics of "an evil cult," the words China uses to describe the movement.
Falun Gong has recently stepped up its campaign in Hong Kong following a crackdown by Beijing. That was prompted by an apparent suicide bid by five people who set themselves on fire in the city's Tiananmen Square last month.
Tung said he was shocked by the images. Falun Gong leaders have denied their members were involved.
Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, which was granted a high degree of autonomy after returning to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula worked out with Britain.
Law Yuk-kai, of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, deplored Tung's comments and questioned what close monitoring meant.
"Describing it as an evil cult is irresponsible. Governments have to restrain themselves from calling any belief or group such names," he said.
"If Falun Gong is just voicing its views, it does not deserve such things (surveillance). Does that mean the government will tap their phones, intercept their mail?"
'Walking a tightrope'
Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic Party, said: "If we carry on like this and the central government isn't nice to the Catholics, Protestants or Buddhists either, and seeks to brand all of them as cults, will Hong Kong call them cults too?"
An editorial in the mass-circulated Chinese-language Apple Daily called Tung's remarks "dangerous and unreasonable."
Kan Hung-cheung, a leader of the spiritual movement in Hong Kong, said: "I can't see Mr Tung taking real action to protect Hong Kong people's human rights, freedoms and rule of law."
But some political analysts have been more generous saying Tung -- picked by China for the post-colonial role of chief executive -- was walking a tightrope between pleasing Beijing and defending Hong Kong's special status within communist China.
Sonny Lo, a politics professor at Hong Kong University, said: "Sandwiched between Beijing and the Falun Gong, that was the best Tung could do.
"By calling the group an 'evil cult', Tung was giving a clear signal to Falun Gong to tone down and understand the predicament of the Hong Kong government."
Political commentator Lau Siu-kai, a sociology professor at the Chinese University said the best approach was to persuade Falun Gong members in Hong Kong to assume a lower profile.
"The government must appeal to people's political pragmatism, that high profile Falun Gong activities will hurt the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing, and that will be detrimental to Hong Kong," Lau said.
About 40 Hong Kong-based Chinese officials and local delegates to China's National People's Congress (NPC), or parliament, held a seminar on Friday to criticise Falun Gong.
"Hong Kong's Falun Gong organisation has been increasingly departing from the nature and objective it stated when it registered in Hong Kong earlier on, and is gradually becoming internationalised and politicised," said Liu Shanzai, deputy chief of Beijing's Liaison Office in Hong Kong.
"Any attempt by any organisation... to turn Hong Kong into a base of subverting the central government, damaging the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong's society, is certainly not allowed and will definitely not succeed," Liu said.
Another local representative to the NPC said the government should ban Falun Gong if there was proof the group had departed from its religious nature.