Falun Gong Won't Fold

Falun Gong, a mixture of Buddhism and founder Li Hongzhi's special, slow-motion exercises, is sweeping China, where it is banned.

China's communist rulers today escalated their campaign against the new religion, CBS News' Barry Petersen reports. They vowed to crush what they say is a cult and announced the first criminal charges against its leaders.

Officials were shocked when ten thousand Falun Gong members surrounded a government complex just off Tiananmen Square last April to protest their treatment. It was the largest anti-government demonstration since pro-democracy students took over the square in 1989.

Falun Gong members are being arrested by the thousands, in a government attack even more intense since the state-run paper, The People's Daily, warned that the party will not show the "devil cult" any mercy.

At a secretly arranged news conference in Beijing, Ding Yan showed off her bruises from allegedly being handcuffed while in police custody. "After they tie you like this," she said, "they throw you on the ground."

Eleven year old Qu Yuyan was expelled from school for his belief.

A former policeman gave up his job rather than give up Falun Gong.

Believers see this as a holy war -- religious faith versus communist force. It's a dangerous battle. The government has banned the group and now has a new anti-subversive law ordering authorities to persecute Falun Gong even harder.

There are Falun Gong followers all over the world, but the biggest group is in China, where their number is said to be between 70 to 100 million. That's more members than there are in the Chinese communist party. And that's why the Chinese government sees Falun Gong as a threat.