Falungong is legal all over the world except mainland china, that fact itself figures out all.
SINGAPORE — A Singapore court Tuesday charged 15 followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement with illegal assembly after their unauthorized vigil in memory of fellow believers they say died in police custody in China.
The nine men and six women were led into a Singapore courtroom in handcuffs to hear the formal charges. Most wore bright yellow T-shirts that read: "The great law of Fa Lun: truthfulness, benevolence, tolerance."
The charges, including obstructing a police officer, were read to each defendant in English and translated into Mandarin through an interpreter.
After their arrest on New Year's Eve, the detainees refused to post bail, saying they did nothing wrong.
But by the time the court hearing ended late Tuesday, they were each in the process of posting $1,150 bail.
Falun Gong member Ng Wee Keong said the accused were all "fellow practitioners" of the spiritual movement. Police detained them just before midnight Sunday after a three-hour standoff involving about 80 Falun Gong members in a Singapore park. The sect, legal in Singapore, has been banned in China and has been targeted by a crackdown there.
The Falun Gong members, mostly women and children, had gathered around two makeshift cardboard memorials pasted with pictures and names of the alleged victims in China. Demonstrations and protests are rare in tightly controlled Singapore, where permits are required for any public gatherings.
Most of the detained Falun Gong members in Singapore are Chinese nationals, according to a court document.
At least two dozen police cordoned off the area and demanded that the Falun Gong followers hand over the memorials. They refused, at one point locking arms to prevent police from detaining members, police said.
The crime of obstructing a policeman carries a maximum jail sentence of 3 months and a maximum fine of $285. The unlawful assembly charge also carries a maximum 3-month jail term, and a maximum fine of $2,850.
The meditation sect has attracted millions of members in China and throughout the world. Beijing, fearing Falun Gong's popularity and its threat to Communist Party rule, has banned the group and sent thousands of members to prison and labor camps.
Human-rights groups say at least 92 have died in detention since the government banned the sect in July 1999, including four who were reported dead Tuesday by the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
The Hong Kong-based information center said the latest victims included 33-year-old Xu Bing and 34-year-old Lou Aiqing from China's eastern Shandong province.
Police arrested the two Dec. 20, when they were posting Falun Gong slogans on walls in Shandong's Qingdao city, and beat them in detention, it said.
On Dec. 24, police informed the families of Xu and Lou that they had died of heart disease.
Spotting numerous wounds on the bodies, the families took pictures of the corpses, only to have the films seized by police, the rights group said.
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