BEIJING, June 26 — Falun Gong supporters interrupted two local cable television programs in the past week, breaking in to show messages saying the spiritual sect is good, police and a human rights group said Wednesday.
The first incident happened Friday evening, in the eastern city of Laiyang, in Shandong province. Falun Gong supporters interrupted a cable-television music program for 10 minutes, showing an image of a banner saying, "Falun Dafa is good" in Chinese, said a local police official, who would give only his surname, Zhang. Falun Dafa is another name for the group, which was banned in 1999 as a threat to public safety and communist rule.
Police then launched a search for the people involved, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
Activists then also showed a similar scene for a few seconds at about 8 p.m. on Tuesday in Yantai, another city in Shandong, the Information Center said.
Falun Gong activists have broken into cable television systems to broadcast protests in at least four other cities: Chongqing in the southwest and Harbin, Changchun and Anshan in the northeast.
People arrested in the other incidents have been sentenced to up to 16 years in prison.