HONG KONG -- China is to begin trying about 300 leaders of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement just days after a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Beijing, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Thursday.
A court in Chongqing city in the western province of Sichuan would try Gu Zhiyi on Sunday, the start of a series of trials across the nation, the Information Center of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said in a statement.Annan left the country on Wednesday after a visit earlier this week, during which he raised Beijing's crackdown on the movement in talks with government leaders.
Zhiyi, a 63-year-old retired teacher, was charged with "making use of an evil cult to destroy the enforcement of the law."
Chinese authorities accused her of commanding several thousand followers to besiege a Chongqing newspaper office in November and leading about 1,000 adherents to practice Falun Gong in a public square in the city in June.
The center said Zhiyi was expected to be sentenced to more than 12 years in jail.
It said Chinese authorities had asked all provinces to try to finish trials of Falun Gong members before Beijing resumes control of Macau from Portugal on December 20.
A total of 300 would be tried while an estimated 1,000 Falun Gong adherents were already in labor camps, the Hong Kong human rights group said.
Meanwhile, a local Falun Gong member told Reuters most of the five Hong Kong practitioners who were detained by Chinese police in Beijing on Wednesday had been released and were now returning to Hong Kong, due for arrival later on Thursday.
The five, including a child, were rounded up when they tried to unfurl a Falun Gong banner in Beijing.
Falun Gong, outlawed in China, is legal in the territory which retains a high degree of autonomy.