on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 09:20 am:

Tuesday, April 25 9:30 AM SGT

A plainclothes policeman summons a van to pick up a man, right, who has just had his bags checked. APBy Fong Tak-ho and agencies

POLICE detained at least a dozen Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square yesterday, the eve of the first anniversary of a mass sit-in that prompted a Communist Party crackdown on the movement.

The authorities stepped up security measures in and around Beijing as authorities braced themselves for more demonstrations by the banned spiritual movement.

Although the authorities denied that any special preparations were in place, a public security bureau source said police were ``particularly tense'' and there were clear signs of a stepped-up security presence in Tiananmen Square, the traditional focus for demonstrations.

Beijing is making local police officers personally responsible for stopping sect members from going to Beijing to protest during today's anniversary.

Cheng Ke, a Falun Gong member based in Tienjing, said she was warned by police yesterday that she should not go to Beijing to take part in protests.

Ms Cheng, 68, a retired cadre of a state-run construction materials supplier, said she was being kept under surveillance.

In a show of urgency, the police had established an accountability system whereby if sect members were successful in making their way to Beijing to join the protests, the police officer responsible for surveillance would be blamed, Ms Cheng told the Hong Kong Standard last night.

She said her husband was sick with worry over her safety.

Despite the police crackdown, Ms Cheng said she intended to continue to practise the rituals associated with the movement.

Ms Cheng said she was detained by police from 29 February to 30 March, while at least nine Falun Gong members in her neighbourhood had been sentenced by the authorities.

There were reports that police would be checking motorists entering the capital in a bid to prevent a repeat of last year's embarrassment, when 10,000 Falun Gong followers staged the biggest protest in the capital since the 1989 democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.

The banned group issued a statement yesterday saying it saw ``no end in sight'' to its persecution by the communist authorities.

``In the one year since the gathering, we have come to witness the Chinese government undertake one of the largest, harshest and most arbitrary persecutions in modern history,'' the group said in a statement faxed to the media in the United States.

Witnesses said among the detainees were two women who had tried to unfurl a Falun Gong banner _ a method of protest adherents have tried almost daily in Beijing since the government banned the movement last July.

Elderly people were being questioned as they strolled through the symbolic heart of the capital.

But it is impossible to distinguish Falun Gong followers from the throngs of rustic-looking tourists from China's provinces until the adherents unfurl their tell-tale banners or strike the meditative postures of their movement.

Accounts by witnesses of detentions in the vast square have tended to underestimate the daily police haul of mostly elderly devotees from distant provinces who risk arrest and possible beatings.

The once-obscure group has defied a fierce government crackdown and kept up sporadic protests for almost a year.

A cabinet spokesman boasted last week that ``China has shown no mercy in its crackdown against organisers and key members of the cult''.

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