BEIJING, April 25 — Members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group staged small scattered protests today on Tiananmen Square in an attempt to commemorate the second anniversary of a silent sit-in that the movement held outside the leadership compound in 1999.
That brazen 10,000-strong demonstration to seek official recognition took the government by surprise. It catapulted the obscure spiritual organization into international awareness, also leading a few months later to the government ban.
Today, at least 12 members were detained as they adopted the typical Falun Gong meditative pose or unfurled small banners with slogans like, "Falun Gong Is Good."
The protesters arrived in groups of two and three. Some couples had small children.
The police often pushed or hit the demonstrators as they were herded into the police vans that have become fixtures on the square in the last 18 months.
The protests were remarkably smaller than those on the first anniversary, when hundreds were detained. They demonstrated that the government's vicious 20-month campaign against Falun Gong had been at least somewhat successful in squashing a movement that once said it had 70 million practitioners on the mainland, or at least in driving the group underground.
On a bright spring day, the arrests were overshadowed by the tourists who packed the square, although foreign tourists who witnessed the events had their film confiscated, observers said.
Falun Gong was declared an "evil sect" and banned in July 1999. Since then, the state media has been filled with invective against the group. Schoolchildren have had to attend anti-Falun Gong classes, and recalcitrant members have been subjected to police harassment, detention and, for organizers, long prison terms.
Since the ban until early this year, members have staged small silent acts of civil disobedience on Tiananmen Square almost daily. The actions became a routine. One or two members would climb the stairs to the square, strike a pose indicating they were a Falun Gong practitioner and promptly be arrested.
But in January, five members, including one child, doused themselves with a flammable liquid and set themselves on fire on the square. The spectacle has caused the police to redouble their efforts to weed out members. The images of the burned child that were splayed across Chinese newspapers reinforced ideas that the movement was, indeed, extreme.
Since then, protests have been more sporadic, in part because the police have become more active. On sensitive dates like today, they check identity papers of all Chinese at the entrances to the square and sniff soda bottles to make sure that they do not contain gasoline.
After months of the crackdown, many of the most persistent members are in custody. Up to 10,000 followers are in labor camps, according to human rights groups, and more than 100 have died in custody.
Although public protests have declined, it is not clear whether the private exercises have waned. Many members continue to practice secretly at home, members say, although they face losing their jobs or being detained if they are found out.
Falun Gong combines slow motion exercises and meditation with an idiosyncratic blend of Eastern philosophies that members say promote physical and emotional health. Founded by Li Hongzhi, a former Chinese bank clerk in exile in the United States, it was widely and openly practiced in Chinese parks in the late 1990's.
Although it has no overt political goals, the sudden assembly of 10,000 protesters at the leadership compound in 1999 was an overtly political act in a country where demonstrations are banned unless they have permits.