Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – In the largest campaign since in 1999, police have made massive arrests across the country in an operation against Falun Gong followers, especially in the provinces of Shandong, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, this according to Falun Gong sources.

In the meantime, Amnesty International has launched a campaign on behalf of Ms Liu Yawen, a Falun Gong member who was arrested and disappeared without trace for distributing Video-CDs.

Falun Gong is a spiritual movement that focuses on meditation and physical exercises inspired by Buddhist and Taoist traditions—through breathing and other exercises practitioners seek health, immortality, peace and harmony.

This began on April 25, 1999, when more than 10,000 Falun Gong followers demonstrated peacefully against the violation of their rights.

Since July 1999, the movement, which had some 100 million practitioners, has been subjected to a brutal policy of persecution, a policy put forth by then President Jiang Zemin because it was a "heretical organisation" and a "threat to social and political stability".

Since then anti-Falun Gong propaganda has become merciless with people being jailed, tortured (38,000 cases according to Falun Gong sources) and killed.

From July 1999 to April 2005, these sources have reported 1,880 documented deaths, often as a result of physical and psychological torture. The actual figure is likely higher since this information is considered a "state secret" and punishable with prison.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of followers are still in prison (in some cases, entire families) and more than 200,000 have been sent to labour re-education camps without trial.

Others have been sent to mental hospitals and subjected to "brain washing" and unnecessary and dangerous pharmacological treatment to make them recant. (PB)