BEIJING (AP) _ Four leading Falun Gong members in China have been charged with organizing a cult, the government said, a sign trials against the banned spiritual group may begin soon. The four _ Li Chang, Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu and Yao Jie _ were believed to have been picked up by police around the time the government banned Falun Gong in July. They had been accused in reports by state-controlled news media, but a government announcement Sunday was the first official word that their trials were expected.
The four were accused of "organizing a cult to undermine the implementation of laws," the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.
Li, Wang and Yao also were charged with violating China's vague state secrets law, a measure often used against political dissidents. Ji and Yao were charged with running illegal businesses, the report said.
They were formally charged on Oct. 19, and their families were notified a day later, Xinhua said.
On Saturday, the National People's Congress' executive committee approved tightening the law on cults to allow for stronger penalties.
The revisions of the criminal code approved on Saturday make leaders of Falun Gong and other groups labeled as cults liable for prosecution for murder, fraud, endangering national security and other crimes. Such offenses are punishable by more than the 2- to 7-year prison terms allowed for cult organizers under the current statute.
Ordinary adherents of Falun Gong have been slipping into Beijing to urge the government to stop attacking the group, saying it is not a cult or political threat as the government alleges.
"We just want to tell the government this decision is wrong and ask the government to investigate it again," said Liu Dongmei, who came to Beijing two weeks ago from the northeast city of Dalian. "We are not organized, and we are not against the government."
The government-controlled news media have accused the four of being leaders in a hierarchical organization extending from a central group in Beijing, the Falun Gong Research Society, down to small groups of practitioners in cities and towns throughout the country.
Earlier reports accused Li, Wang and Ji of planning the April 25 protest by 10,000 Falung Gong practitioners in Beijing.
The government banned Falun Gong in July as a threat to communist rule and social stability and kicked off a huge propaganda campaign to vilify the movement and its leader, Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in New York.
Falun Gong is an offshoot of traditional schools of slow-motion exercise that channel unseen forces of nature to the body. Blending ideas from Buddhism and Taoism, it was popular throughout the country and practiced openly in public parks before the ban.
Many Falun Gong practitioners have recently tried to go to the two offices that take complaints about government mistakes _ the "Letters and Calls" offices of the Communist Party headquarters and the State Council, the highest government body, Ms. Liu said. Police have arrested them on their way or once they get there, she said.
Copyright ¢©1999 ABC News Internet Ventures.

BEIJING, Oct. 31 - The Chinese government said today that it had brought criminal charges against four "principal" Falun Gong members, setting the stage for the first trial in Beijing in the three-month-old crackdown on the popular meditation and self-discipline movement.
The four--Li Chang, Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu and Yao Jie--were charged with "organizing a cult to undermine the implementation of laws," the official New China News Agency reported. Li, a former police official, Yao and Wang also were charged with violating China's state secrets law, a measure often used against political dissidents. Ji and Yao were charged with running illegal businesses, the report said.
Today's announcement marked another step in China's intensifying crackdown on Falun Gong. On Saturday, the Chinese legislature passed a law banning cults, opening the way for possible death sentences for Falun Gong leaders; last week, the Beijing government said it had determined that Falun Gong is a cult.
Beijing tonight also rejected Western criticism that it is suppressing religious freedom. Central Television quoted Li Zhaoxing, China's ambassador to the United States, as accusing American critics of a "double standard" in speaking out against China's crackdown while tolerating U.S. government moves against such groups as the Branch Davidians.
The indictments today came as Falun Gong practitioners who have flocked to Beijing over the last few weeks took a day off from protesting government moves to suppress the movement and the harsh new legislation. For the last six days, Falun Gong followers had demonstrated around Beijing's Tiananmen Square and at the government complaints office in western Beijing. A massive police presence around Tiananmen Square and near the adjacent Great Hall of the People appeared to scare off protesters, but Falun Gong sources in Beijing said they will continue demonstrating.
For most people in the capital, the campaign against Falun Gong seems bizarre in a country facing other, more pressing problems--such as a slipping economy, corruption, environmental degradation and faltering public services.
Today, the government-run media argued in a Beijing TV broadcast that "if Falun Gong had been allowed to continue, all economic reforms would have been stopped."
A commentary in the People's Daily, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, hailed the new law as a "powerful legal weapon to smash evil cultist organizations, especially Falun Gong. Evil cults are a cancer in society and an international phenomenon that no responsible government can tolerate."
Still, many Chinese expressed amazement that the government appears so intent on dismantling an organization that seems to have no real political platform.
It was founded by by Li Hongzhi, who left China several years ago and now lives in Queens, N.Y.
"My sister does Falun Gong and she doesn't care about democracy or revolution or whatever," said Ouyang Hai, 54, a factory worker. "We don't understand it."
China appears to be cracking down on the group because it fears any organization outside its control. Falun Gong's challenge to the Communist Party has been "unprecedented in the 50-year history of the People's Republic in terms of the size of its organization, its influence, number of illegal publications as well as the damages it brought to the society," the New China News Agency said Saturday.
While student-led democracy demonstrations here in 1989 marked the most serious ideological challenge to the party since 1949, they were generally unorganized and were quelled by the army in a swift, blunt assault. Falun Gong, on the other hand, boasts about 10 million practitioners across China, organized in thousands of chapters that communicate with cellular telephones and the Internet.
Discipline in the movement is strong, as evidenced by the several thousand practitioners who are believed to have come to Beijing to protest the government ban. On April 25, more than 10,000 suddenly showed up outside the Chinese leadership's Zhongnanhai compound near Tiananmen Square to demand official recognition of their movement. Analysts said that the failure of China's security apparatus to anticipate the demonstration represented one of the most serious intelligence lapses in the history of Chinese Communist rule.
Falun Gong followers insist, however, that they have no hidden political agenda. "I do this exercise and read Li Hongzhi's book because I want to be a better person, not because I want to overthrow the party," said Wang Xuebing, 47, of Changchun. "Look at me," said the woman, dressed in a cheap red woolen coat and frayed boots, "do I look like a revolutionary?"

BEIJING (AP) - As quickly as they appeared in China's political heart for a campaign of quiet defiance, members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have gone underground, on the run from police and biding their time.
Behind Sunday and Monday's apparent lull after six days of peaceful vigil in Tiananmen Square there is no calm. The communist government is pledging to wipe out the ``evil cult'' by putting the unrepentant in jail.
``We are afraid of nothing,'' Falun Gong campaigner Jiang Zhaohui, in Beijing last week to protest and now in hiding, said via e-mail.
In the struggle between the sect and the Communist Party lies a tale of two groups: one, a band of faithful held together by zeal, organization and the tools of the Information Age; the other, heirs to a revolutionary underground grown ploddingly bureaucratic and less ideological in running a vast, changing nation.
More than three months after banning, harassing and vilifying Falun Gong, the party leadership seems far from prevailing. Last week it ordered police sweeps and issued a new law to sentence principal organizers to long prison terms or death at upcoming trials.
``They've arrested the leaders and severely dealt with Beijing residents who rented rooms to Falun Gong members. But this proves that the traditional methods, drawn from the Chinese Communist Party's political experience, don't work anymore,'' said Wang Shan, an author and political commentator. ``Falun Gong is not so easy to overthrow.''
Thousands of followers quietly poured into China's capital in recent weeks, relying on a network of local sympathizers and staying in touch by Internet, mobile phones and pagers. One organizer said he had changed his pager number 20 times in two months to avoid detection.
Jiang, the Falun Gong member, said in his e-mail he remained in touch with practitioners who along with him held a clandestine news conference Thursday with foreign reporters. He did not say if any had been arrested, but another group member reported police had picked up several of the followers.
Some sect members returned to Tiananmen Square on Monday morning, although in vastly smaller numbers than they did for six days last week. Six followers were detained by the police, witnesses said.
In interviews with foreign reporters and with officials of the Communist Party, followers have said they want the ban lifted and the government to acknowledge that Falun Gong - a blend of slow-motion exercises with ideas drawn from Buddhism and Taoism - is good.
``The discipline and dedication of the Falun Gong in some sense takes page from the early history of the'' Communist Party, said Dali L. Yang, a China specialist at the University of Chicago.
The party has indirectly acknowledged the parallels. In passing a new anti-cult law Saturday, senior members of the legislature called the challenge posed by Falun Gong ``unprecedented'' in 50 years of communist rule. They cited Falun Gong's organization, size and the reach of its message.
In just seven years, Falun Gong has attracted anywhere from 2 million adherents, the party's figure, to 100 million worldwide, most of them in China. The latter figure, the group's, could be larger than the party's 61 million members.
People's Daily, the party's most authoritative newspaper, on Monday described Falun Gong as craftily organized into different tiers to better resist the police and government - a description reminiscent of the secretive cell structure the communist underground used in the 1920s and '30s.
``An extremely small number of behind-the-scenes Falun Gong plotters are still operating in the shadows. In their second and third echelons, an extremely small number of backbone members remain submerged,'' the People's Daily warned.
Also alarming to Chinese leaders is the profile of Falun Gong's rank-and-file: the unemployed in their 40s or older, the elderly, retired officials and party members - groups who feel left behind by China's 20-year march to free markets.
``Falun Gong represents the strength of the proletariat,'' said Wang, the political commentator. ``China is in the midst of a market-economy revolution. It's going down the road of capitalism. This is what happens when a regime leading a capitalist revolution meets the resistance of the proletariat.''

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police maintained a close vigil on Tiananmen Square for members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement today, and China's leading newspaper warned the group remained active despite a three-month eradication campaign.
After six days of low-key protests by Falun Gong followers seemingly trailed off Sunday, group members returned to the vast square today, although in smaller numbers than last week.
Plainclothes police and uniformed officers, patrolling the plaza in larger than usual numbers, quickly arrested six Falun Gong followers and drove them away in minibuses, a witness said.
The ruling Communist Party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily, called for continued vigilance, claiming that Falun Gong was organized into several tiers in an effort to escape police crackdowns and ``oppose our party and government for a long time.''
``An extremely small number of behind-the-scenes Falun Gong plotters are still operating in the shadows. In their second and third echelons, an extremely small number of backbone members remain submerged,'' the newspaper said.
In an apparent reference to last week's acts of civil disobedience by group members on Tiananmen Square, the newspaper added that ``in a few places, there are still some people holding illegal gatherings.''
Last week's protests were prompted by practitioners' fears of new regulations targeting Falun Gong and other groups that the government regards as dangerous cults. Approved Saturday by the legislature, the regulations allow for stronger penalties against cult leaders.
In an indication of impending trials, the government announced Sunday that four leading Falun Gong members were formally charged Oct. 19.
Li Chang, Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu and Yao Jie, who are believed to have been in detention since the government banned Falun Gong in July, were accused of ``organizing a cult to undermine the implementation of laws,'' the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.
Li, Wang and Yao also were charged with violating China's vague state secrets law, a measure often used against political dissidents. Ji and Yao were charged with running illegal businesses, Xinhua said.
Saturday's revisions to the criminal code make leaders of Falun Gong and other groups labeled as cults liable for prosecution for murder, fraud, endangering national security and other crimes. Such offenses are punishable by more than the 2- to 7-year prison terms allowed for cult organizers under the current statute.
Falun Gong is an offshoot of traditional schools of slow-motion exercise that channel unseen forces of nature to the body. Blending ideas from Buddhism and Taoism, it was popular throughout the country and practiced openly in public parks before the government banned it in July as a threat to society.

BEIJING (AP) - Four leading Falun Gong members in China have been charged with organizing a cult, the government said, a sign trials against the banned spiritual group may begin soon.
The four - Li Chang, Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu and Yao Jie - were believed to have been picked up by police around the time the government banned Falun Gong in July. They had been accused in reports by state-controlled news media, but a government announcement Sunday was the first official word that their trials were expected.
The four were accused of ``organizing a cult to undermine the implementation of laws,'' the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.
Li, Wang and Yao also were charged with violating China's vague state secrets law, a measure often used against political dissidents. Ji and Yao were charged with running illegal businesses, the report said.
They were formally charged on Oct. 19, and their families were notified a day later, Xinhua said.
On Saturday, the National People's Congress' executive committee approved tightening the law on cults to allow for stronger penalties.
The revisions of the criminal code approved on Saturday make leaders of Falun Gong and other groups labeled as cults liable for prosecution for murder, fraud, endangering national security and other crimes. Such offenses are punishable by more than the 2- to 7-year prison terms allowed for cult organizers under the current statute.
Ordinary adherents of Falun Gong have been slipping into Beijing to urge the government to stop attacking the group, saying it is not a cult or political threat as the government alleges.
``We just want to tell the government this decision is wrong and ask the government to investigate it again,'' said Liu Dongmei, who came to Beijing two weeks ago from the northeast city of Dalian. ``We are not organized, and we are not against the government.''
The government-controlled news media have accused the four of being leaders in a hierarchical organization extending from a central group in Beijing, the Falun Gong Research Society, down to small groups of practitioners in cities and towns throughout the country.
Earlier reports accused Li, Wang and Ji of planning the April 25 protest by 10,000 Falung Gong practitioners in Beijing.
The government banned Falun Gong in July as a threat to communist rule and social stability and kicked off a huge propaganda campaign to vilify the movement and its leader, Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in New York.
Falun Gong is an offshoot of traditional schools of slow-motion exercise that channel unseen forces of nature to the body. Blending ideas from Buddhism and Taoism, it was popular throughout the country and practiced openly in public parks before the ban.
Many Falun Gong practitioners have recently tried to go to the two offices that take complaints about government mistakes - the ``Letters and Calls'' offices of the Communist Party headquarters and the State Council, the highest government body, Ms. Liu said. Police have arrested them on their way or once they get there, she said.