BEIJING, April 25 (Kyodo) - Police in China beat and detained at least 33 people Wednesday as sporadic protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square marked the second anniversary of banned spiritual sect Falun Gong's first major demonstration.
Uniformed and plainclothes police pounced immediately on a group of middle-aged men and women as they unfurled a yellow banner in the square Wednesday morning, Kyodo News correspondents witnessed.
Officers beat and kicked several of them before knocking them to the ground. The protesters were then herded into waiting vans.
Police also detained a foreign television cameraman filming the scuffle and watching tourists were accosted and forced to hand over film from their cameras.
A struggling woman was dragged by the hair into a police van after she shouted slogans such as ''Falun Gong is legal!'' Other protesters put up less resistance as police pushed them into vans, which darted about the crowded square to intercept protesters.
Similar demonstrations, often larger, have marked nearly every public holiday and major anniversary of the sect's struggle for acceptance since Beijing launched a severe crackdown on Falun Gong in fall 1999.
The sect attracted worldwide attention when more than 10,000 practitioners staged a peaceful sit-in on April 25, 1999, in front of the national government compound at Zhongnanhai in central Beijing.
Participants said the massive demonstration was staged to compel Beijing to officially recognize the spiritual group. However, the move backfired, as the Communist leadership responded by branding Falun Gong an ''evil cult'' and banning it three months later.
In a statement Tuesday carried on the sect's official Web site, founder Li Hongzhi referred to those who suppress Falun Gong as ''thoroughly incurable evil lives.''
The somewhat cryptic message concluded: ''Eliminating the evil is in accordance with the law.''
Similar statements read in Beijing have been taken as an incitement to rebellion and the government has offered them as justifying its often brutal crackdown.
In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members urged the Chinese leadership to stop persecuting practitioners in mainland China as they too marked the incident that led to the suppression of their movement two years ago.
About 150 Hong Kong adherents, braving the rain, protested at a park next to the local legislature building and demanded the Chinese leadership clear their group's name.
They said the sit-in outside Zhongnanhai on April 25, 1999 was neither a political demonstration nor a besieging of the Chinese government as claimed by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
The Chinese followers at the time said they were protesting the arrest of members in Tianjin, who demonstrated against a scientist's criticism of the sect, and appealing that their practitioners not to be harassed.
Hong Kong, a Chinese special administrative region, allows Falun Gong to be practiced as long as its members abide by the territory's laws under the ''one-country, two-systems'' principle.
The Hong Kong adherents claimed the persecution against the Falun Gong in mainland China has increased over the past two years and that their fellows are being subjected to much more brutal treatment than before.
''At the second anniversary of this event, we appeal urgently to those upright Chinese leaders and all kind-hearted people around the world: let your conscience speak and help stop the brutal persecution in mainland China,'' the group said in an open letter.
The members staged the protest peacefully by practicing their breathing exercise at the park.
Earlier Wednesday, about 20 of their representatives petitioned the Chinese central government's liaison office in Hong Kong and tried to hand in an appeal letter, but no staff from the office received the group.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong members, Kan Hung-cheung, said they are planning to hold more peaceful protests next month when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visits Hong Kong for a global business forum.
AP-NY-04-25-01 0653EDT
Copyright 2001 The Kyodo News Service.