At least 100 members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual sect yesterday defied a security net to protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
It was the first anniversary of the sect's mass demonstration against the Chinese government, when thousands of Falun Gong members took part in one of the biggest unauthorised demonstrations seen in the Chinese capital under communism.
Eyewitness accounts, including that of a Western diplomat, indicated that at least 100 Falun Gong practitioners had been taken into custody, some violently, since early yesterday.
A reporter saw police pushing, dragging and kicking about 10 practitioners as they piled them into police vans.
A woman who tried to unfurl a small yellow banner was seized by several plainclothes officers and pushed inside a van. An officer kicked a woman in the back as she was getting into another van.
Police also detained several foreign journalists and confiscated film and video cassettes from tourists suspected of recording the protests.
The protests indicate that belief in the sect's quasi-religious teachings remains strong a year after the movement achieved international attention by staging a 10,000-strong demonstration around the Chinese leaders' headquarters in Beijing.
They also signal that the government has not succeeded in suppressing followers despite a ban on the group last July.
"Today is a day when the government, the Chinese people and the international community should really ask themselves why, after a year of crackdown, so many people are still willing to sacrifice their jobs, their children's education, their future to practice Falun Gong," said Ms Belinda Pang, a Hong Kong spokeswoman for the sect.
The government has labelled Falun Gong an "evil cult" and the biggest threat to social stability since the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.
Last week it admitted it had encountered difficulties in smashing the sect, which claims to have 80 million followers in China.
The US ambassador to China, Mr Joseph Prueher, said yesterday that his country was monitoring China's crackdown on the Falun Gong movement and called on Beijing to observe international human rights standards.
"What went on today in Tiananmen with the detention of Falun Gong practitioners is something we [are watching] very carefully," he said.