BEIJING (AP) -- China has again tightened its laws against the Falun Gong spiritual movement, highlighting the government's difficulties in stamping out the group after banning it nearly two years ago.
A legal directive issued by Chinese judicial authorities and announced Sunday by the official Xinhua News Agency marked a further hardening in the crackdown on Falun Gong, which the government considers a dangerous cult.
Under the directive, courts can prosecute Falun Gong practitioners for intentional wounding or murder, a death penalty offense in China, for organizing, encouraging or helping fellow followers commit suicide or injure themselves.
That clause was designed to prevent incidents like the group suicide attempt by five people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in January, Xinhua reported.
China said the five -- two of whom died -- were Falun Gong adherents, a claim the group disputed.
The new legal directive also targeted Falun Gong practitioners who have defied the government by distributing pamphlets and information about the group and the crackdown.
Under the revisions, followers can be prosecuted under subversion laws if they produce or distribute anti-government materials, Xinhua reported. Laws against separatism can also be used to prosecute followers who advocate the break up of China or who disturb national unity, it said.
Secrecy laws -- which in China are vague and sweeping -- can be used to punish followers who leak or obtain state secrets, Xinhua added. It said that clause was aimed at Falun Gong members who have obtained secret documents about the crackdown.
The directive goes into effect Monday.
Public protests by Falun Gong practitioners have tailed off in recent months, possibly because so many followers have been sent to jails and labor camps or been forced by authorities to renounce the group.
But adherents continue to frustrate officials by surreptitiously distributing Falun Gong materials, sometimes shoving pamphlets into letter boxes.
Followers have also scrawled Falun Gong graffiti and hung banners in public places and posted information on the Internet, including the names and phone numbers of police and prison officers they accuse of beating and even killing detained practitioners.
Group founder Li Hongzhi, who now lives in the United States, and his followers "are constantly hatching new plots," Xinhua quoted an unidentified spokesman for China's top court and prosecutor's office as saying.
Falun Gong, which attracted millions of adherents in the 1990s, says it is a peaceful spiritual cultivation movement with no political agenda and teachings that forbid killing, including suicide. Followers say Li's Buddhist- and Taoist-influenced instructions promote health, moral living and even supernatural powers.
The legal directive, issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate and Supreme Court was not the first time China has broadened its laws against Falun Gong.
In October 1999, three months into the crackdown, China's legislature tightened anti-cult laws to quash Falun Gong and allow courts to sentence principal organizers to long prison terms and even death.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.