A Hong Kong appeals court cleared some convictions Wednesday against 16 Falun Gong followers for protesting outside China's liaison office but upheld more serious verdicts in a case seen as a test of this territory's freedoms under Chinese rule.
The spiritual group is outlawed on mainland China as a cult that threatens communist rule but it can practice freely in Hong Kong.
Sixteen members, including four Swiss citizens and a New Zealander, had been prosecuted and ordered to pay small fines for the March 2002 demonstration against China's crackdown on Falun Gong.
A three-judge panel of Hong Kong's Court of Appeal overturned the 16 protesters' convictions for public obstruction.
"I am not satisfied that the magistrate (in the initial case) fully and fairly considered the whole of the evidence before him," one of the judges, Geoffrey Ma, wrote in the ruling.
But the court upheld convictions against nine of the 16, including the New Zealander, for obstructing police, and against three Hong Kong residents for assaulting police.
Several dozen Falun Gong followers meditated outside the court Wednesday to show support for the defendants.
Falun Gong claims hundreds of its followers have been killed in police custody in mainland China.
Followers practice meditation and perform slow-motion exercises. Activists abroad insist the group is nonpolitical and nonviolent and has been victimized unfairly.
This former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under an agreement granting it considerable autonomy and many civil liberties denied on the mainland.
The case against the 16 was the first in which Falun Gong followers were criminally prosecuted in Hong Kong. Many viewed it as a test of whether Hong Kong's judiciary is subject to subtle pressure from Beijing.
"We're glad that the court has affirmed that a citizen's right of demonstration has to be respected, but we regret its decision to uphold the other charges," said Kan Hung-cheung, a Falun Gong spokesman.
He said he still believes that China is trying to extend to Hong Kong its suppression of Falun Gong and that those whose convictions were upheld will appeal to Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal.
Department of Justice spokesman Felix Leung said he had no comment on the ruling.