HONG KONG, Oct 26, 2000 -- (Reuters) Chinese police on Thursday bundled members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement into vans and drove them out of Tiananmen Square, witnesses and a Hong Kong human rights group said.

Witnesses in Beijing said they saw a commotion in the center of the square at the heart of the Chinese capital at around 1 p.m. (0500 GMT), after somebody threw a bunch of white leaflets in the air.

Dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police rushed to the area and surrounded a group of about a hundred people, although it was not clear if they were all protesters.

Witnesses said they saw dozens being driven away in police minivans, which circled the square for most of the day. Others were detained after identifying themselves as Falun Gong practitioners when questioned by police.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said the Chinese police had stepped up vigilance on Falun Gong to forestall any upcoming mass protests, as followers had arrived in Beijing for a planned petition on October 30, exactly a year after Falun Gong was labeled [...].

The Hong Kong group said mass protests were very likely to take place on October 30.

The spiritual movement, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise with a doctrine loosely rooted in Buddhist and Taoist teachings.

It first rattled Beijing in April last year with a 10,000-strong protest around the country's leadership compound, and the movement was banned later that year. Its practitioners have since staged daily protests in Tiananmen Square.

MORE FOLLOWERS DIE

On Thursday, the human rights group said two more Falun Gong followers had died of ill treatment in police custody in China.

A total of 59 Falun Gong adherents had died of abuse in detention since July last year when Beijing began a crackdown on the movement, the information center said.

One of the latest victims, Qi Fengqin, was a 43-year-old government official in the eastern Shandong province.

She was arrested on September 10 for distributing materials about Falun Gong and the persecution of its practitioners.

On October 5, she started a hunger strike during detention. On October 10, police force-fed her, which damaged her lung and stomach. She was sent to hospital on October 11 and died afterwards, the Hong Kong group said.

Police arrested 34-year-old businessman Zhong Hengjie in Shenyang city in northeastern Liaoning province in September. This month, his family received a notification that Zhong had committed suicide on October 3 during his detention.

But his friends and relatives suspected that Zhong was beaten to death, the information center said.