Around a hundred people have protested outside the Chinese embassy against what campaigners claim is the persecution of members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The demonstrators, many of them British, claim Chinese authorities have tortured and killed hundreds of practitioners of Falun Gong - an Eastern art of refining the body and mind through exercises and meditation.
They say thousands of others have been sent to labour camps since the Chinese government banned the movement in 1999.
Following a silent protest outside the embassy in central London, demonstrators marched to Downing Street carrying pictures of people they say have been killed. They then handed in a letter to the Prime Minister calling on the Government to make a statement in support of the Falun Gong practitioners.
Two British demonstrators, who were deported from China earlier this year after travelling there to protest, say the communist regime felt threatened by Falun Gong.
Rosemary Katzen, 42, from Leicester, said: "They seem to see it as a threat, they do not understand why people want something other than communism.
But it goes against the Chinese constitution what they are doing. That states that people are allowed to have their own beliefs."
Lee Hall, 21, a student at Loughborough University, said: "More than 350 people have been sentenced to death and we just wanted to go over there and protest. We have got to let people know that this is going on even though we are on the other side of the world."
Peter Jauhal, chairman of the UK Falun Gong Association, says action is now even more urgent after recent reports that the Chinese leader Jiang Zemin had ordered the execution of Falun Gong practitioners. This followed a
broadcast on Chinese state television by members of the movement.
http://www.europeaninternet.com/china/frames/frames.php3?webnewsid=1525436
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