Falun Gong rallies against PRC government

Taipei, Taiwan - Falun Gong rallies against PRC Thousands of slogan-chanting Falun Gong practitioners and supporters took to the Taipei streets on Sunday to protest against the continued suppression on the sect in China.

The protesters called for support of the movement to topple the Chinese communist party, saying, "only after implementing democracy can China have bright future."

"People around the world are aware that Chinese communist regime's atrocities in the past decades, but they may not know that today when China boasts that it has implemented reform and open policies, it still suppresses its people with violence and lies," the demonstrators said in a statement.

"Judging from all these atrocities, we can know that the Chinese communist party's cruel and evil intrinsic nature has never changed whatsoever."

The demonstrators also highlighted their latest charge against Beijing, accusing China of harvesting organs of Falun gong members killed in concentration camps.

China outlawed the Falun Gong, which combines meditation with Buddhist-inspired teachings, as an "evil cult" in mid-1999 and practitioners have told of often brutal repression.

The U.S. government has said that a team of U.S. officials had found no evidence in northern China to support claims that Falun Gong followers had been killed and their organs harvested.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington had taken the Falun Gong's charges "seriously" and urged the Chinese government to probe the claims.

There are an estimated 300,000 Falun Gong adherents in Taiwan.