Falun Gong [taps into] TV again in China - Falun Gong [practitioners] practice meditation exercises in Hong Kong in this May photo. [Practitioners] of the movement, which is [suppressed] in China, [tapped] into the TV airwaves in a Chinese city on June 23 to show footage [praising] the virtues of their faith.
REUTERS/Bobby Yip
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/i-asia-112430.html
June 26
BEIJING (Reuters) - [Practitioners] of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement [tapped into] the television airwaves in a Chinese city this week to again show footage [praising] the virtues of their faith, police said Wednesday.
"Falun Dafa is Good," read a banner shown on television screens in Laiyang city Sunday, in the eastern province of Shandong, a Laiyang police official said.
"But it only lasted one minute," she said. However, a Hong Kong-based rights group said that the [transmitted] television images were broadcast for 15 minutes and were followed by a similar [transmission] lasting five minutes on Tuesday in coastal Yantai city, some 60 miles away.
A Yantai police official had no information on the reported [airing], but said: "We received an urgent notice yesterday to be on alert for this."
Falun Gong [tapped] into cable television broadcasts in the northeastern cities of Harbin in April and Changchun in March in a bid to convince the public that [practitioners] suffer wrongful persecution by a Communist government trying to crush it.
Another transmission lasting two minutes was reported in the southern province of Hunan Tuesday but could not be confirmed, the Hong-Kong based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.
Hunan television and police officials were not reachable for comment.
The transmission in Laiyang interrupted a satellite feed that reached a viewing area of several hundred square kilometers and would have required the use of an antenna more than three meters tall, the rights group said.
[...]
The airings have been among the group's most daring actions since it was [suppressed] in 1999. [...]
The New York-based Falun Dafa Information Center said in May that the group had [tapped into] the airwaves of large Chinese cable networks five times in the previous three months. This could not be independently verified.
Police have arrested more than 20 Falun Gong [practitioners] for the March 5 incident in Changchun. They could face prison terms of up to 15 years, according to Chinese officials.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20020626_171.html
