TAIPEI (Reuters) - A group of members of the Falun Gong, the spiritual movement outlawed in China as a cult, kicked off a 400-km (250-mile) trek walk across Taiwan on Tuesday, calling for the release of jailed Chinese adherents.
Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with the sign "SOS", 21 Falun Gong practitioners set off on the two-week walk from the island's capital Taipei to the southern port city of Kaohsiung.
"We hope China will stop persecuting Falun Gong members and release them," the group's Taiwan leader Chang Ching-hsi told Reuters.
"We want to expose China's evil deeds," said Chang, a professor of economics at the elite National Taiwan University.
The group has intensified its activities overseas in recent months and staged a walk across the United States and a hunger strike in Hong Kong.
Falun Gong says more than 50,000 practitioners in China have been sent to prisons, labour camps and mental hospitals since Beijing banned the group in 1999.
Human rights groups estimate some 200 Falun Gong adherents have died from torture during detention.
Beijing says the group is trying to overthrow the Communist Party and caused the death of at least 1,800 people by suicide or refusal of medical treatment.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, mixes traditional Chinese breathing exercises with Taoist and Buddhist elements of meditation and philosophy. Its practitioners extol its powers of healing both physical and emotional ailments.
Beijing outlawed Falun Gong in 1999 after thousands of members laid siege to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound to demand official recognition.
Falun Gong says it has about 100,000 followers in Taiwan.