BEIJING: Police swarmed around the closing session of the National People's Congress yesterday to prevent members of the Falun Gong movement from registering complaints against the banning of the group.
Plainclothes and uniform police blanketed Beijing's Tiananmen Square in front of the Great Hall of the People and were seen questioning and searching people.
The police presence was particularly heavy in West Jiaomin Alley just west of the square where the NPC complaints bureau is situated.
``During the past two days there has been a constant stream of Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested while trying to file appeals to the NPC complaints bureau,'' said Hannah Lee, a Falun Gong practitioner from New York, who is now in Beijing.
Practitioners were calling on the NPC to open a fair, public and objective debate on the July 22 crackdown on the group and to release jailed Falun Gong practitioners.
Ms Lee expressed strong indignation over the police detention of Falun Gong members who have sought to use their constitutional right to petition the government.
Before being banned, the spiritual group practised public group meditation and breathing exercises, while advocating moral standards based on traditional Buddhist and Taoist beliefs.
Western journalists in Beijing have seen small groups of people being taken away by police from the alley, but could not independently confirm the people were Falun Gong practitioners.
Beijing police refused to comment.
However, the sign to the NPC complaints bureau was removed from the building, similar to the removal last year of the sign in front of the State Council's complaints bureau after the group was banned.
One practitioner from Beijing, named Niu Jingping, has been held by Beijing police since Tuesday and threatened with ``immediate arrest'' if he continued to attempt to petition the NPC, Ms Lee said.
Other Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing have also been rounded up and put in ``education centres'' at their work units to prevent them from holding demonstrations during the parliamentary meeting.
Pictures of a group of some 70 Falun Gong practitioners were smuggled out of the Huangshandian drug detoxification centre in southwestern Beijing last week, where they were reportedly being held while the congress was in session.
The Zhong Gong spiritual movement, a group similar to the Falun Gong, also petitioned the NPC over an unannounced ban on the group and the ``illegal'' confiscation by police of documents that lawfully register the group with the government.
The Zhong Gong group, like the Falun Gong, boasts tens of millions of followers throughout the mainland, but, unlike the Falun Gong, has been legally registered with the Civil Affairs Ministry.

The Zhonggong spiritual group has petitioned the NPC to protest against police action that has shut 3,000 of its registered enterprises and thrown 12,000 employees out of work.
The group's open letter to the NPC said the crackdown was illegal and that law enforcement agencies had illegally confiscated 810 million yuan (HK$760 million) of the group's funds.
The crackdown follows an order from President Jiang Zemin in October, which labelled the group an "illegal organisation" despite its legal registration, it said.
"One word from Jiang Zemin has stripped some 12,000 Zhonggong enterprise workers - each with the economic responsibility of two to three others, or a total of some 40,000 people - of their livelihoods," the letter said.
It accused Mr Jiang of illegally confiscating the group's lawful registration and called on delegates to investigate the Government for violating the "right of subsistence" of the people involved.
The move coincides with an ongoing crackdown against the Falun Gong spiritual group. The two groups both practice traditional Chinese meditation and breathing exercises, while adhering to Buddhist and Taoist philosophies on clean living and high moral standards.
The Zhonggong protest letter also called for an apology from the central Government, urged the crackdown to be halted and demanded the return of the group's legal documents and funds.
"In such a big country as ours, power should not be unlimited. We should not have a party that can cover heaven with its hands and make the words of one person law," it said.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said more than 600 Zhonggong members had been arrested since October. The group was founded by "qi gong master" Zhang Hongbao in 1988 and by 1992 boasted as many as 38 million followers.
Its economic activities included books and video-tapes, health and Chinese traditional medicinal products, as well as instruction centres and tourist agencies.
The Government had not formally publicised the crackdown on the group because it still had not wiped out the Falun Gong, the centre said.

Zhizhen "Mary" Qian, a software engineer, and her son, David Sun, 11, returned to Fremont Thursday after several days of police detention in Beijing. Qian and David were among 18 followers of Falun Gong, the popular mystical movement banned in China, who were arrested Friday and Saturday. Eight of the 18 were Bay Area residents.
Qian was taken into custody last Friday.
Loretta Sukmei Lam, 42, of San Leandro, and Jein Shyue, 44, of San Jose, who stayed in the same detention center with David, returned to the Bay Area Tuesday night.
Lam, Qian, and the boy are U.S. citizens. Shyue, a Taiwanese citizen, is in the process of attaining U.S. citizenship.
The four arrested Bay Area residents who remain detained in Beijing are Chinese citizens with U.S. working visas. They include San Jose residents Yilin "Vennessa" Wang, her husband Sheng "Johnson" Zeng and Wei "Sam" Guo in addition to Wenqing "Wendy" Fang.
Local Falun Gong followers said they were trying to appeal for the release of Wang, Zeng, Fang and Guo.
"We're trying to talk to (U.S.) senators," said Allen Zeng, 32, the brother of Johnson Zeng and a Falun Gong follower. "We're trying to find the location of the detention center, but haven't gotten any results yet."

Seven Falun Gong members held in Shenzhen were arrested after arriving illegally by speedboat from Hong Kong, according to a friend. Fears are growing that the four Hong Kong and three Australian women could face re-education through labour, a human rights group said.
Border police arrested the women and a boy last Saturday after they took the speedboat to avoid border checkpoints, the friend, also a Falun Gong member, said in Hong Kong.
"They are on all the computers," she said. "They cannot go to China." The group had been arrested previously and deported.
The SAR women, aged between 30 and 40, are housewife Chow Shing, nurse Wong Tsui-lai, Wong Yiu-hing and Wang Ying, who also holds an Australian passport.. They were intending to take the train to Beijing to protest in Tiananmen Square during the National People's Congress.
A human rights activist said he feared for the women's safety. "I think it is very dangerous for them," said Frank Lu Siqing, of the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.
"In the past they have been sent back to Hong Kong within a few hours. This time they have been kept for more than five days.
"Usually they formally arrest them within 48 hours, but police at the Yantian police station would not tell me if the women had been formally arrested, just that they were investigating them.
"The women could face re-education through labour," he said, which means they could be held without charge for up to three years.
Falun Gong spokeswoman Belinda Pang said Wong Yiu-hing's son, Lee Chi-lan, seven, was detained but released a day later.
The Australian women are housewife Zhang Cuiying, businesswoman Tao Hualian and a third woman, known only as "Laura". Quote for the day: Aim as high as you can. Don't let anything limit your faith.

TOKYO, March 10 (Kyodo) - The Japanese branch of China's outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong said Friday it will reapply for nonprofit organization (NPO) status, following the Tokyo metropolitan government's rejection of its application.
Masaaki Tsuruzono, a Japanese representative of Falun Gong practitioners in Japan, told a press conference the group will provide whatever documents are lacking and amend existing documents deemed inappropriate for the reapplication.
Japan Falun Dafa, based in Tokyo's Adachi Ward, applied in November to the metropolitan government for NPO status.
''We never imagined we would be rejected since we thought that Gov. Shintaro Ishihara understood our group well. Our group uses religious expressions but we are not a religion,'' Tsuruzono said.
Japan Falun Dafa does not plan to protest or file a lawsuit against the metropolitan government, he said.
In a regular conference on Friday, Ishihara denied that the metropolitan government's decision was made because of political pressure from China.
''China has nothing to do with it, the decision was based purely on the legal process. We do not aim to be criticized or praised by them,'' Ishihara said. ''It is wrong to make this issue into a diplomatic one. This is what is bad about Japanese diplomacy,'' he added.
On Wednesday, the metropolitan government rejected the group's application, citing doubts over its claim that it does not chiefly aim at religious activities.
The metropolitan government also said that the group allows only those who recognize and love Falun Gong to become members.
Another reason cited for the rejection is that the group's balance sheet shows no income or expenditure.
The Japanese law governing NPOs stipulates that groups whose aim is chiefly religious or political cannot be granted nonprofit organization status. A group may also be denied NPO status if it sets ''unfair conditions'' for joining the group.
With NPO status, a group can register as a legal body, making it easier to rent offices or open bank accounts.
Japan Falun Dafa's application to the metropolitan government says it aims to publicize Falun Gong through volunteer activities and that it will not engage in any religious or political activities.
Several applications for NPO status have been rejected since a law authorizing prefectural governments to give groups such a status came into force in December 1998.
Falun Gong is said to contain elements of Taoism, Buddhism and folk religions. More than 10,000 practitioners peacefully surrounded Beijing's Zhongnanhai leaders' compound last April to demand official recognition of the group.
China, which began an intensified crackdown on Falun Gong in July last year, branding it an ''evil sect,'' has conveyed its anxiety to the Japanese government over the emergence of a Japanese branch.

TOKYO, March 10 (Reuters) - Falun Gong, a spiritual group banned by China's ruling Communist Party that fears it as a threat to its rule, said on Friday it wants to reapply for special tax status in Tokyo.
The group sidestepped questions over whether it believed Tokyo's metropolitan government had bowed to pressure from the Chinese government by rejecting its application this week.
``We want to fix what the metropolitan government said as inappropriate and reapply,'' said Masaaki Tsuruzono, the group's representative in Japan. The Falung Gong pursues practices that mix Buddhism and Taoism and are designed to harness energy in the body.
The Tokyo metropolitan government rejected this week its application for recognition as a ``non-profit organisation,'' which would have allowed it to be treated as a corporation rather than as a religious group. It has some 400 adherents in Japan.
The government said there were discrepancies in forms filed by the group and it had doubts about some of its statements concerning its religious activities.
Tsuruzono told a news conference the group would change what was said to be inappropriate and stressed that the Falun Gong was not a religion.
Beijing had asked Tokyo not to grant the group the special status, saying such a decision would sour relations between the capitals of Asia's most powerful nations.
Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, a nationalist who is adamant in his disapproval of the Chinese government, originally brushed aside China's request as interference in the city's internal affairs, and many observers had expected him to support the group's application.
Beijing banned the Falun Gong last year, saying the sect brainwashed its followers, and had caused 1,400 deaths by instructing them to use Falun Gong practices rather than medicine to cure illnesses, or by driving them to suicide.

Parliamentary chief Li Peng praised the legislative body for playing a key role in smashing the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Mr Li told the annual session of the National People's Congress that the mainland had achieved a great victory over the banned movement, which mixes Buddhism, Taoism and breathing exercises, and has been labelled a cult.
"We drafted resolutions to ban cults, prevent their activities and punish those involved. This has had great significance in maintaining social order," he said.
"China has achieved a great victory in taking decisive action in the struggle against Falun Gong," he told a session of the Congress held in the Great Hall of the People.
The hardline former premier, who is also remembered for other legal milestones such as the decision to declare martial law in Beijing in 1989, ranks second in the Communist Party hierarchy behind party chief, President Jiang Zemin.
China says the group is an "evil cult", and that 1,400 people have died as a result of the group's reliance on self-healing rather than seeking medical help.
China clamped down on the Falun Gong after 10,000 of the group's members staged a silent protest outside Zhongnanhai, the party's headquarters in Beijing, last year.
The Congress amended legislation to allow stiffer punishment for cult-related activities, and some 20 of the group's leaders have been jailed for up to 18 years.
Mr Li also said Congress had "resolutely defended the interests and dignity of the nation by taking a clear stand in numerous statements denouncing the hegemonistic acts of the United States-led Nato in bombing our embassy in Yugoslavia".
Nato bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May last year during the war with Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
He also noted that the Congress had held "frank discussions" with legislators from the US and other Western countries on sensitive issues such as Tibet, Taiwan, human rights and religious freedom in the past year.
Mr Li also praised the Congress for drafting a compensation law and a law on sole proprietorships as well as amending the individual income tax, highway, criminal and company laws.
During the session, the Congress plans to review the Legislation Law.
The law gives it the power to review regulations and rules drafted by government departments if they conflict with the constitution.

Some 70 members of the banned Falun Gong sect are on hunger strike in detention at a drug-detoxification centre near Beijing, an activist said.
Authorities have launched a huge security operation in the capital to prevent sect members from protesting during the annual session of parliament, the National People's Congress.
But despite blanket security the Falun Gong have held sporadic protests in and around Tiananmen Square in the past five days, as they have done since they were labelled an ``evil cult'' and banned on July 22.
A Falun Gong member from New York, Hannah Lee, said the detained people have refused food since being detained seven days ago at the centre, which used to house a mental asylum.
She said 52 of those detained at the Huang Shan Dian detox centre in Fangshan district had previously been put in a mental hospital and released in December after undergoing ``re-education'' aimed at ending their belief in the spiritual teachings of the group.
``Most of these people are from the Fangshan district, but some come from other parts of the country such as Jiangsu province,'' Ms Lee said.
Pictures taken with a camera smuggled into the centre show the detainees doing their regular meditation exercises.
Other practitioners in Beijing have also been rounded up and put in ``education centres'' or ``re-education courses'' at their work units to prevent them from holding demonstrations during the parliamentary meeting, other Falun Gong sources said.
Police have maintained a heavy police presence around the Great Hall of the People bordering Tiananmen Square since the 11-day NPC opened on Sunday.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said on Monday that four United States passport holders and four US residents carrying mainland passports had also been detained.
US embassy officials have refused to comment, citing privacy laws protecting US passport holders.
A Hong Kong practitioner said her 61-year-old mother was among 17 who were detained for 24 hours from Sunday near her home in Beijing's western Haidian district.
``They were forced to write statements promising not to practise or to go to Tiananmen Square during the NPC,'' she said.
``It is ironic that the NPC is supposed to represent people from many districts and represent a wide variety of ideas, but we are not allowed to say anything.''
Police have detained thousands of Falun Gong members, while scores of alleged ``core leaders'' of the group have been tried and sentenced to up to 18 years imprisonment.

SPIRITUAL CRACKDOWN Bay Area residents, including boy, 11, arrested, detained before speaking out Loretta Sukmei Lam knew she risked arrest in going to China to protest t he persecution of Falun Gong followers. But she didn't expect police to sweep in even before she got to make her stand for the popular but outlawed spiritual movement.
The 42-year-old San Leandro woman, a nurse at Chinese Hospital in San Francisco, was back home in San Leandro Tuesday night after spending three nights in custody in Beijing.
She and seven other Bay Area residents were among 18 Falun Gong followers arrested Saturday night in a Beijing rental house.
"We didn't expect it so early, before our action," Lam said. "I told police, 'I haven't done anything.' "
Lam said the 18 had gone to China separately with plans to protest in Tiananmen Square and to try to address the Chinese People's Congress on Sunday.
But at 8 p.m. Saturday, police raided the home where they were staying, arrested them, ransacked the home and confiscated their belongings, she said. Lam and two other U.S. citizens, including an 11-year-old Fremont boy, were separated from the others, who were Chinese citizens, including four who live in the Bay Area on work visas.
She was interrogated daily and had to ask for the most basic necessities, but said she wasn't treated badly "because I was a U.S. citizen." During the raid, however, she said she had seen police use a stun gun on a San Jose resident, Yili "Vennessa" Wang, 28, for trying to keep them from taking the group's book on Falun Gong meditations and exercises.
Police awoke her group early Tuesday morning and escorted them to the airport, where she boarded a plane for Hong Kong and then San Francisco.
Police told her that the Fremont boy's mother, Zhizhen "Mary" Qian of Fremont, had been arrested two days earlier in Tiananmen Square and would be reunited with her son, David Sun, to fly home.
Earlier Tuesday, Philip Sun had heard nothing about the whereabouts of his ex-wife and son, and was worried.
"I'm very upset. I can't understand why the Chinese would take the child," Sun, 44, of Redwood City, said. "No child could be guilty."
Sun, and other concerned relatives and friends of the detainees, have repeatedly called the U.S. Embassy for information since learning of the Saturday night arrests.
The arrests follow months of police crackdowns in China against Falun Gong, which has an estimated 60 million to 70 million practitioners worldwide. Police are trying to stem protests during the national legislature's annual session.
Sun said his ex-wife's arrest was her second run-in with Beijing police. Last year, Qian traveled to Beijing with her son, in another attempt to appeal the Chinese government on behalf of Falun Gong, Sun said. Police confiscated their passports and airline tickets for several weeks before letting mother and son return to the United States.
The other Bay Area residents arrested are Jein Shyue of San Jose, a U.S. citizen, whom Lam said was taken to Beijing airport Tuesday.
The four arrested Bay Area residents who are Chinese citizens include Wang of San Jose, her husband, Sheng "Johnson" Zeng, 30, of San Jose, Wenqing "Wendy" Fang, 30, and Wei "Sam" Guo, 26, of San Jose.
Local Falun Gong followers planned to send a letter Wednesday asking for help from U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both D-Calif., U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, and other government officials.

President Jiang Zemin told NPC delegates from Hong Kong yesterday that he had absolutely no idea what the banned Falun Gong was until the sect staged a sit-in in Beijing last spring. The President recalled how shocked he was when he was told about the demonstration.
Hong Kong delegate Ma Lik quoted him as saying he had to ask his aides what the Falun Gong was when they told him more than 15,000 sect members staged the sit-in last April to demand official recognition of their movement.
Mr Jiang said he then found out from reading that the Falun Gong was an "evil cult" and more than 1,400 followers had died because they were led to believe their faith alone could cure their diseases.
The sect, which combines Buddhism and Taoism with deep-breathing exercises, was officially banned last July after the Government said it destabilised the society and its teachings were evil.
Meanwhile, a human rights group said yesterday that police had detained three Australian and four Hong Kong Falun Gong followers in Shenzhen.
The seven, all women, planned to go to Beijing to appeal for an end to the government ban when they were detained last Saturday, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said.
It identified two of the Australians as Zhang Cuiying and Tao Huolian, but did not have the name of the third.
One of the Hong Kong residents, Wang Yaoqing, was detained along with her seven-year-old son, the group said. It added the child was later released. In addition, four United States citizens detained by Beijing police last Saturday in a sweep of Falun Gong followers remained in custody yesterday.

BEIJING, March 9 (Kyodo) - China on Thursday supported the Tokyo metropolitan government's decision to reject an application for nonprofit organization (NPO) status from the Japanese branch of China's outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong.
''The 'Falun Gong' group is a genuine cult...The Tokyo municipal government's decision is sensible,'' China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the Tokyo metropolitan government rejected the Falun Gong application because of ''doubts'' over the group's claims that it does not chiefly aim at religious activities.
The 1998 Japanese law governing NPOs stipulates that groups whose aim is chiefly religious or political cannot be granted nonprofit status.
Japan Falun Dafa, based in Tokyo's Adachi Ward, had applied in November last year for nonprofit status, which would have made it more convenient, as a legal body, to rent office space and open bank accounts.
But China, which has intensified its crackdown on Falun Gong, contacted the Japanese central government after the branch in Tokyo filed its application.

President Jiang Zemin told NPC delegates from Hong Kong yesterday that he had absolutely no idea what the banned Falun Gong was until the sect staged a sit-in in Beijing last spring. The President recalled how shocked he was when he was told about the demonstration.
Hong Kong delegate Ma Lik quoted him as saying he had to ask his aides what the Falun Gong was when they told him more than 15,000 sect members staged the sit-in last April to demand official recognition of their movement.
Mr Jiang said he then found out from reading that the Falun Gong was an "evil cult" and more than 1,400 followers had died because they were led to believe their faith alone could cure their diseases.
The sect, which combines Buddhism and Taoism with deep-breathing exercises, was officially banned last July after the Government said it destabilised the society and its teachings were evil.
Meanwhile, a human rights group said yesterday that police had detained three Australian and four Hong Kong Falun Gong followers in Shenzhen.
The seven, all women, planned to go to Beijing to appeal for an end to the government ban when they were detained last Saturday, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said.
It identified two of the Australians as Zhang Cuiying and Tao Huolian, but did not have the name of the third.
One of the Hong Kong residents, Wang Yaoqing, was detained along with her seven-year-old son, the group said. It added the child was later released.
In addition, four United States citizens detained by Beijing police last Saturday in a sweep of Falun Gong followers remained in custody yesterday.

An application by the Japanese branch of Falun Gong-the spiritual movement outlawed in China-for status as a nonprofit organization was rejected Wednesday by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
Officials said documents submitted by the Falun Gong did not meet legal requirements.
A metropolitan government official denied that political pressure influenced the decision.
``The decision was not made for diplomatic reasons, but strictly on whether the group's activities are eligible for recognition under the law,'' said an official with the metropolitan Community and Cultural Affairs Division charged with authorizing NPO status for groups.
The official explained that inconsistencies were found in the group's balance sheet-which stated zero spending-and its activities which involved using large venues for gatherings.
The metropolitan government also said the group's guidelines for membership were unclear. It also said that group publications also had what can be regarded as religious references. Religious groups are not granted a nonprofit organization status under the law.
The official said the group had the option of resubmitting a revised application, or could file a complaint with the metropolitan government.
The metropolitan government's decision on the NPO status of the Japanese branch of the Falun Gong was one of several sensitive bilateral issues with China that include possible visits by the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and Taiwanese leader Lee Tenghui.
A representative of Falun Gong in Japan said he could not understand the rejection of the group's application.
``The reason for the rejection is not at all clear,'' said Masaaki Tsuruzono.
He said the group had not yet decided what to do next.
``If the metropolitan government is expressing its concern over strained relations with China, I would understand. We can submit the application at a later date,'' Tsuruzono said.
The Falun Gong movement submitted the registration application to the metropolitan government in November.
The movement, which combines traditional meditation and health practices, was banned last year by Beijing as a menace to public order.