China yesterday issued awards to about 1,600 participants in the crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, and announced "a great victory" over the sect.
"The party and Government in accordance with the will of the people have taken a series of important and resolute measures and led the entire nation in staunchly struggling against the evil Falun Gong cult," Politburo member Li Lanqing said on television. "We have won a great victory," he told a meeting at the Great Hall of the People.
The crackdown was necessary, Mr Li said, as the outlawed group was "a cancer destroying human civilisation, violating human rights, harming society and bringing calamity to the nation and people". While proclaiming victory, Mr Li said that the fight against the group would continue to be "a complicated, sharp and long-term" one.
The ceremony for awarding 110 "advanced collectives" and 271 people engaged in the crackdown was presided over by Communist Party leaders Ding Guangen, in charge of propaganda, and Luo Gan, the party chief who oversees law and order.
Award winners, sporting large paper roses pinned to their chests, were seen glumly listening to Mr Li's speech. Many were from the police or military. The 19-month crackdown on the Falun Gong has resulted in several hundred practitioners being sentenced to up to 18 years in prison, while at least 10,000 have been placed without trial in re-education-through-labour camps, human rights group say.
About 120 Falun Gong followers are known to have died in police custody, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy has reported.
In his address, Mr Li denied that Falun Gong followers were being mistreated, rejected or discriminated against by the Government, maintaining that only a small number of ringleaders and stubborn followers were being dealt with as criminals.
"From the high perspective of responsibility for the people and humanitarianism, we have made great efforts to educate and save them [ordinary followers], while shining the light of reason, compassion and understanding for the law," Mr Li said.
In a related development, the China Securities News reported yesterday that the mainland had released new software to filter out Falun Gong's information on the Internet.
The software, called Internet Police 110 (the number people dial to reach police), was released nationwide yesterday, according to the newspaper.
The software is designed to block access to Internet sites promoting Falun Gong and similar organisations labelled cults.
Meanwhile, Thai Falun Gong followers have cancelled plans to hold an international conference in Bangkok during April. The decision follows pressure on the group by the ethnic Chinese community in Thailand and the Thai Government, which said it did not want to harm its relations with China. Falun Gong organisers said yesterday they cancelled the conference to avoid social divisiveness in Thailand.