The Washington Post
BEIJING — The banned Falun Gong spiritual movement staged a takeover of state television in the Chinese city where its founder was born, interrupting shows on several channels and transmitting a film protesting the government crackdown on the group, state-run media reported Friday.
Falun Gong members cut into the cable network in the northeastern industrial city of Changchun at two locations on Tuesday evening and used portable video equipment to broadcast its message into homes across the city in brief intervals twice during the evening, according to the Changchun Daily. The stunt was an extraordinary breach of the Communist Party’s control of television and one of the most daring protests by Falun Gong since the government condemned it an "evil cult" in 1999 and launched an intense, often violent campaign to wipe it out.
The protest appeared timed to embarrass China’s leaders, who were gathered in Beijing for the opening of the national parliament’s annual meeting. The proceedings were marred again on Thursday when seven foreign Falun Gong members unfurled a banner nearby on the northern edge of the capital’s Tiananmen Square. Police quickly arrested the protesters.
Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in the United States, said the demonstration was not connected with the television protest in Changchun. She said the adherents in Changchun appeared to have acted on their own, and word of their success reached overseas followers days later.
She said television programs on all eight of the city’s cable channels were interrupted with footage of Falun Gong’s U.S.-based leader, Li Hongzhi, and a video accusing the Chinese government of staging the self-immolation of purported Falun Gong members in Tiananmen last year.
It is unclear how many people saw the video, but residents say a majority of the city’s 1.3 million residents have access to cable television.
Local authorities responded quickly, inspecting cable lines and signal amplifiers throughout the city, the Changchun paper said. Workers discovered two breaks in the network and seized video equipment at both locations, the paper said. At one of the locations, the paper said, police spotted two Falun Gong members tampering with the cable but managed to capture only one of them.
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