In the biggest, and certainly one of the oddest, protests seen in Beijing in a decade, some 15,000 members of a religious cult besieged the Chinese leadership compound near Tiananmen Square yesterday to demand fair treatment from the authorities.
The demonstrators carried no banners or placards, they made no speeches, and their protest, which lasted for 13 hours, was held in almost total silence. From 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. the multitude simply stood or sat tightly packed six-to-eight deep for a distance of 2 km around the north and west sides of the compound, sometimes reading from little blue books of spiritual guidance.
At one point when the setting sun made a fleeting appearance, they turned towards it and applauded. "Did you see it?" a middle-aged man asked excitedly.
The people who dared to bring their protest to the centre of power in China were members of the Fa Lun Gong sect, which claims 100 million members and whose US-based leader, Li Hongzhi (47), advocates physical and spiritual healing through oriental exercise like qigong.
Leaders of the sect demanded to see the Chinese Premier, Mr Zhu Rongji, to protest against attacks on the cult in the official media, and the arrests of several members after a sit-in last week in the nearby city of Tianjin.
Police closed the roads around the compound and just before darkness handed out sheets of paper with instructions to disperse. This cited a ruling from the Complaints Bureau of the State Council which said members of the cult had never been banned from practising their qigong activities and that while they were allowed to air their opinions they should not congregate around the Zhongnanhai government compound.
"The action is wrong because it is already affecting the normal life of the people," it said. "So you must respect the laws and leave the area." Beijing's public security bureau, which has tightened security in Beijing in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown on student protesters on June 4th, was clearly caught off guard by the demonstrators, who arrived in groups from all over China before dawn.
Late last night they left in long, silent columns, heading for the main railway station, after police finally ordered them to end their protest. Adding to the mystery, members of the sect, simple people of all age groups but mostly middle-aged, largely declined to give interviews to reporters, as if under orders.
One man in his 50s in a black vest said, however, they wanted to be recognised as a legal entity. A middle-aged woman chimed in: "We want to have good health in mind and body; this will make us better people and will help our families and society and cut down on state medical costs."
Conventional religious organisations and cults have found a mass following in China amid rapid social change in recent years. Li Hongzhi, the leader of the Fa Lun Gong sect, is a faith healer who maintains that homosexuality, rock and roll, television and drugs are signs of the end of the world.
"Your diseases will be eliminated directly by me," writes Li Hongzhi, in one of his five "sacred texts". He criticises modern science and, quoting from Buddhist law, claims that the power of healing comes from the Chinese martial art form of qigong whose practitioners tap into an inner energy, and is centred on karma, by which people's fate in the next life is determined by their deeds in this one.