Thu, Sep 06 5:37 PM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A handful of Falun Gong followers started a walk across America on Thursday in their latest effort to draw attention to the plight of practitioners they say are held and persecuted in labor camps in China.

The latest protest by the Falun Gong spiritual group, outlawed in China as an [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted], drew about 25 practitioners to the U.S. Capitol building in their trademark yellow T-shirts.

The walk, which follows on from a hunger strike scheduled to end on Thursday in front of the Chinese Embassy, aimed to call for the release of practitioners jailed for violating the ban.

The group has intensified its activities overseas in recent months and has staged walks and hunger strikes in several countries and cities including Hong Kong, Macau and New York.

[...]

Falun Gong says more than 50,000 practitioners have been sent to prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals since China banned the group in 1999.

Human rights groups estimate some 200 Falun Gong adherents have died from torture during detention in China.

Chinese authorities, meanwhile, have acknowledged several deaths of Falun Gong members in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illness.

Most of the walkers who set out on Thursday planned to stop after three days to a week but one, David Lee Jerke, planned to go all the way to Los Angeles, a 3,000-mile journey. He hopes other followers will join him along the way.

"I tell you, this is not a political issue, nor is this a Chinese issue. This is a human issue, and these are crimes against humanity," Jerke said in a speech.

Among the practitioners being held is Teng Chunyan, a permanent U.S. resident sentenced to three years in a labor camp whose case has been raised with Beijing by the administration of President Bush.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, mixes traditional Chinese exercises with [...] meditation and philosophy. Its practitioners extol its powers of healing both physical and emotional ailments.

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Beijing banned the movement in 1999 after it staged a mass [appeal] around the Zhongnanhai leadership compound to demand official recognition.

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