The Falun Gong followers were convicted of damaging radio and television property, and of conspiring to use the group to undermine law enforcement, Xinhua said.
The convictions come in the midst of a push to ensure stability ahead of a Communist Party congress in November at which President Jiang Zemin and other leaders are widely expected to hand power to a younger generation.
The trials started on Wednesday in the city of Changchun in Jilin province, where some cable television broadcasts were disrupted by Falun Gong videos.
Police rounded up the suspects after a March 5 incident in which trunk television cables serving parts of the city were cut off for more than three hours and pro-Falun Gong footage broadcast to some 16,000 viewers, Xinhua said.
The group's New York-based information centre branded the trial a mockery of justice. "Throughout history, those who peacefully defy injustice and the persecution of the human spirit have been called heroes. Today, in this show-trial in Changchun, such people are being labelled 'criminals'," the Falun Gong information centre said.
[...]
China's tough crackdown on the group has curtailed its once-frequent demonstrations.
As protests have petered out, the group has switched tactics, overriding television signals several times this year to broadcast footage proclaiming the virtues of Falun Gong.
Most interruptions have been of local cable signals, but the group also [tapped into] a state-run satellite broadcast during the World Cup soccer finals in June.
China has tightened media controls in the run-up to the party congress, including imposing a partial block on the internet search engine Google, apparently in a bid to cut off access to sensitive topics such as Falun Gong.
State television regulators issued a circular last month threatening to sack broadcasters if Falun Gong programmes were shown over their airwaves.
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* In each of the situations where programs were aired, practitioners tapped into the television signals to give people the chance to see beyond the propaganda thrown out by Jiang’s regime, and to show people that Falun Gong is widely accepted in more than 50 countries.
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