BEIJING, July 23: Chinese security forces detained about 200 people staging a sit-down protest in Tiananmen Square today, one day after the government banned a popular quasi-religious sect, witnesses said.Police then cordoned off the square - the political heart of China and the scene of weeks of student protests crushed in 1989 - and emptied it of all people, the witnesses said.There was no immediate confirmation that the people detained were members of the now-banned Falun Gong, but they were taken away by bus just as sect protesters had been earlier in the week.At a stadium on the outskirts of Beijing, a Reuters journalist today saw buses carrying hundreds of sect followers who had apparently been rounded up by police.Passengers were chanting "Falun dafa, falun dafa'' - an alternative name for the sect - as the buses pulled up to the stadium.China banned the sect yesterday saying it was an illegal organisation that cheats people and threatened social chaos.People attempting topractise in public or disseminate the sect's books would be jailed, state media said.The official Xinhua news agency denounced sect leader Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States, as ``an evil person who has had an extremely disastrous effect on society''.Li says science has created an immoral world plagued by drugs, television and rock and roll music. He says his followers can acquire supernatural powers and do not need doctors because they can cure themselves by practising Falun Gong.Thousands of sect members have been rounded up since Tuesday as they tried to stage peaceful demonstrations in 30 cities against the detention of 100 sect leaders, witnesses and a human rights group said.Falun Gong, a form of spiritual meditation mixed with Chinese mysticism and a conservative social doctrine, says it has 100 million members.The government says it has two million.Whatever the figure, the group's boldness and the quiet persistence of its followers has struck fear in the atheistCommunist Party, which has 60 million members.On Wednesday and Thursday, police rounded up at least 1,000 members who had gathered at the Zhongnanhai Leadership Compound in Beijing and shuttled them to sports stadiums.Several practitioners said they saw police beating members who resisted being herded onto buses or who refused orders later to leave the stadiums and return home.The group first shocked the government in April, when 10,000 members staged a sit-down protest at Zhongnanhai to demand official respect for the organisation.Since then, the Communist Party and government have tried to clean their ranks of the sect's followers and waged an anti-superstition campaign in the state media.
