BEIJING: A court in the northern city of Tianjin had jailed 13 members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement for up to six years for protesting and distributing sect pamphlets, a local newspaper said. The sentences reported in Tianjin's Jinwan Bao evening newspaper on Monday bring to 50 the number of Falun Gong members jailed this month in Beijing and Tianjin alone.
The Tianjin verdicts included a six-year sentence on Cao Chengming, 53, for unfolding a banner at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in a protest with other adherents last October 1, China's National Day, the newspaper said.
Cao, whose banner read ``Falun Gong is not an evil cult'', was convicted or ``using a cult to obstruct the law'', the newspaper said. Fellow protester Hao Nianxiang was jailed for four years.
In a separate Tianjin case, Yang Cuilan, 42, was jailed for six years on the same charges for reproducing and disseminating Falun Gong fliers, audiotapes and video cassettes last October, the newspaper said. On March 1, courts in Beijing jailed 37 Falun Gong followers for up to 10 years for disseminating statements downloaded from the spiritual group's websites. The defendants had distributed fliers opposing the ban imposed on the group in July 1999.