Their crying will never be too late. The Tian'anmen Square suicide attempt by Falun Gong followers on the eve of Chinese Lunar New Year prompted former members, who are serving sentences in a re-education-through-labour centre in Beijing, to harshly condemn the cult with tears.

Yu Jingmei, aged 25, a graduate student who majored in bio-engineering in a prestigious university in Beijing especially regretted what she had done.

"I was misled by the cult,"said a tearful Yu in an interview with China Daily. "At first, I believed the ideas of the cult had some relationship with my major, and so I began to practise Falun Gong."

"Later I began to copy and distribute leaflets and Falun Gong materials in my university and wanted more people to join, and that's why I am staying here for one year,"said Yu.

Yu added that so far Falun Gong had demonstrated itself to be "anti-human, anti-social and against science."

Yu was sentenced to one-year of re-education on the charge of disturbing social order by spreading Falun Gong, an outlawed cult.

The police highly praised Falun Gong members for their successful re-education.

"I can say that 95 per cent of the former Falun Gong followers here have stopped practising the cult,"said Li Jing, a head of the Xingchang Re-education-through-labour Centre, situated in Daxing County, south of Beijing.

The suicide incident took place on January 23, when seven members of the cult set themselves on fire in the square. One died and another four were seriously injured.

Almost all the members involved in reform through labour in Li's centre have expressed indignation about the crimes committed by the evil cult and they have vowed to renounce the cult forever.

Li Jing admitted that in the centre, only four or five former members still believe in the cult. "Our policy, however, is to try our best to help them."

(China Daily 2001/02/03)