AFP: Falun Gong circumvent Beijing crackdown with phones, faxes, Internet

BEIJING, July 11 (AFP) - In a campaign initiative certain to enrage Beijing, the banned Falun Gong movement is using phones, faxes and the Internet to get its message directly to people in China, it said Thursday.

Practitioners have made mostly random calls to Chinese phone numbers, trying to spread information about Chinese persecution of the movement, a Falun gong spokeswoman said.

"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."

Falun gong, banned in China for the past three years, but still legal in Hong Kong, has recently stepped up its campaign for the hearts and minds of the world's most populous country, amid growing signs of jitters in Beijing.

The group is using increasingly sophisticated tactics in its information campaign.

Earlier this week, China roundly condemned Falun gong for interrupting 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, practitioners 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.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Thursday that he had "heard of" instances of Falun Gong members using media other than television to contact Chinese people, but provided no details. […]

The campaign has succeeded in persuading new practitioners 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. [..]

China outlawed Falun Gong in July 1999 [..] and has since arrested hundreds of "backbone followers" of the 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 Falun Gong practitioners were a regular occurrence on Tiananmen Square.

However, these largely tailed off following the “Staged Self-immolation”, and most high-profile demonstrations now appear to be staged by foreigners.

The group now seems to turn its attention increasingly to more subtle types of methods.

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

On Monday, authorities hastily arranged a press conference to lambast the tactic, saying TV broadcasts in large areas of China had been briefly replaced with Falun Gong programmes on a number of occasions last month.