Falungong using phones, faxes, Internet to directly reach Chinese

The Falungong spiritual movement is employing technologies ranging from phones and faxes to the Internet to get its message directly to people in China, where it is outlawed, the group said.

In another example of the group's highly organised and sophisticated propaganda tactics, a spokeswoman said Thursday practitioners have made mostly random calls to Chinese phone numbers, trying to spread information about persecution of the movement.

"Some call up and talk directly to people in China, others use pre-recorded messages," said Hong Kong-based Sophie Xiao. "They call from various places, such as Canada and Hong Kong."

Falungong, banned in China for the past three years, has recently stepped up its campaign for the hearts and minds of the world's most populous country, prompting growing signs of jitters in Beijing.

Earlier this week, China roundly condemned Falungong for hijacking the satellite signals of government-run television stations, warning that new actions of this kind would be severely punished.

While interruption of television channels have been reported since early this year, adherents started using telephone messages long before that, the group said.

"Individuals have been doing it for quite a while, maybe for the past year, or year and a half," said Xiao, who has herself been sending faxes into China containing information about the movement.

Some have also tried to get in touch with Chinese through Internet chatrooms, she said.

"Practitioners are using every way to take their messages into the country," she said.

The campaign has succeeded in persuading new adherents to join, although its main objective is to give the movement's side of the story after "years of round-the-clock brainwashing", Xiao said.

Specifically, adherents are trying to address an incident in January last year when supposed followers of the group set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The fiery suicide bid, which Beijing claims led to the eventual deaths of two of the protestors, appears to have eroded some of the latent support for the group inside China.

"I guess that ... probably the propaganda did work on some Chinese people," said Xiao, referring to the incident as a "staged self-immolation", Falungong's explanation for it.

China outlawed Falungong in July 1999 as an "evil cult" and has since arrested hundreds of "backbone followers" of the Buddhist-inspired movement, while placing tens of thousands in labor camps, the group says.

The group's New York headquarters has alleged that more than 400 followers have died in police custody, mostly from police beatings and maltreatment.

Following the ban, protests by Chinese-based Falungong practitioners were a regular occurrence on Tiananmen Square.

However these largely tailed off following the self-immolation -- although some foreign activists have staged similar demonstrations -- with the group now seeming to turning its attention to often sophisticated propaganda.

The hijacking of satellite television signals in particular has demonstrated advanced technical knowledge, and visibly enraged Beijing.

On Monday, China called a hastily-arranged press conference to lambast the tactic, saying television broadcasts in large areas of China had been briefly replaced with Falungong propaganda on a number of occasions last month.