BEIJING (AP) - China is marking Sunday's anniversary of the banning of Falun Gong with an exhibit of graphic photos that it says show members of the meditation group who committed suicide, mutilated themselves or attacked others.
During the past week, groups of students, soldiers and office workers have filed past the sleek displays of pictures, video footage, text and cartoons with a simple message: Healthy, intelligent people who begin practicing Falun Gong go crazy and hurt themselves and their families.
A New York-based Falun Gong spokeswoman, Gail Rachlin, dismissed the exhibit at Beijing's Military History Museum as a crude smear campaign.
``It's all lies. It's all propaganda,'' Rachlin said. ``The reality is that this (Chinese government) is a totalitarian regime relentlessly persecuting millions of its own people.''
Two years ago on July 22, China labeled Falun Gong an ``evil cult'' and banned the group, which advocates its own form of meditation and light exercise. The Communist Party apparently saw the group's organization and growing ranks - which included several party members - as a threat to its monopoly on power.
Many of the group's leaders have been arrested, but its founder, Li Hongzhi, lives in exile in the United States.
Since the ban, China's police and state-run media have launched a fierce campaign to crush Falun Gong, and it appears to have been successful in driving the group deep underground. Protests are fewer and Falun Gong followers appear more desperate.
``We're close to completely wiping out Falun Gong. There are just a few hardcore members left,'' said Zhao Chongxing, an official in the news office of the State Council, China's Cabinet.
It is almost impossible to know how many Falun Gong followers are left because they risk arrest by acknowledging their activities or by speaking to reporters.
Police detained at least six protesters Friday in Beijing, and more demonstrations were expected Sunday. The group often protests during holidays and the crackdown anniversary.
At the new exhibit, called ``Oppose Evil Cults, Uphold Culture,'' visitors must first pass through metal detectors and their bags are thoroughly searched. Police confiscated a bottle of mineral water from a reporter's bag, apparently fearing it might contain flammable liquid used in the past by Falun Gong protesters who set themselves on fire.
One gory series of photos shows Tan Yihui, a 26-year-old shoe shiner from southern Hunan province who torched himself last February in Beijing. Tan's blackened, contorted body is on its back. His stiff arms look as if they are hugging something. The skin over his thighs is ripped apart, showing yellowish flesh.
A group of junior high students stopped and stared at the pictures, and said, ``How terrifying!'' But an office worker in a neat lavender dress suit quickly avoided it. ``My gosh! I don't dare look at this,'' she said.
Gruesome pictures of five purported Falun Gong followers who torched themselves last January in Beijing's Tiananmen Square were also prominently displayed.
Another picture showed a photo of a farmer in the southern province of Hainan who was allegedly attacked by purported Falun Gong follower, Du Zhuanli. The photo shows a hoe-like farm tool deeply implanted in the head of Du's alleged victim, who suffered severe injuries.
Rachlin, the Falun Gong spokeswoman, said the group could not say if the people featured in the exhibit were true practitioners of the meditation exercises. She said China has blocked the group from investigating.