Chinese courts have jailed 45 alleged Falun Gong organisers for up to 13 years for helping the spiritual movement battle an intense government effort to wipe it out, an official newspaper reported today.
The
Beijing Daily
said they were sentenced in Beijing over the past few days for organising protests, making banners and printing leaflets in defiance of a government campaign against a movement it outlawed and declared an evil cult in 1999.
The newspaper said the heaviest sentence was imposed on Zhang Hongli, jailed for 13 years on charges of renting a safe house, organising the manufacture of banners and printing Falun Gong leaflets.
Others were sentenced for their roles in what were once almost daily protests in Tiananmen Square, China's political heart, which are now rare.
The Beijing Dailysaid Shao Qiang and Qiu Xiuxin were each jailed for 10 years for making banners and organising people to try to raise them in the square, where a heavy police presence meant few such attempts were successful.
It gave no personal details of those sentenced beyond calling them diehards, but when the Communist Party began its crackdown on Falun Gong, it found adherents almost everywhere.
In the party's war against Falun Gong organisers have been jailed while recalcitrant followers have generally been sent without trial to labour camps.
The Communist Party accuses Falun Gong, which stunned the leadership with a mass protest outside its central Beijing compound in April 1999, of aspiring to overthrow it. Falun Gong denies any political aims.
The movement says more than 50,000 followers have been jailed, sent to labour camps or mental institutions in the crackdown. It alleges many are tortured, some to death.