The sweep culminated in the government's ban on the group. An additional 4,230 people were detained Oct. 25-30, and since then police have picked up about 60 Falun Gong followers daily, the center said. Although parts of Li's speech in the Great Hall of the People were published by the state-run media, details on the detentions were not, the human rights center said. China has been reluctant to reveal the extent of its crackdown on the group, in part because the numbers would show the group's popularity and its members' fervor. Falun Gong preaches a mixture of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism and Taoism.
Practitioners try to channel unseen forces into their bodies to promote health and morality.
In October, after the initial police suppression in July and August subsided, thousands of followers nationwide streamed into Beijing to stage silent protests in Tiananmen Square. Even on Oct. 1, when Beijing was under a curfew for a military and civilian parade in Tiananmen Square to celebrate 50 years of communist rule, protests continued. It was unclear how many of the detentions were repeat offenders. A government spokesman, in giving partial details on last month's crackdown, told foreign reporters that 60 percent of those rounded up and sent back to their home provinces later returned.