Some 230 Hong Kong organizations Sunday took part in an anti-cult forum at the Hong Kong City Hall,which attracted some 1,500 people, including a number of celebrities and scholars.

Speaking at the seminar on "China's Development and Spiritual Civilization," sponsored by the Hong Kong Culture Association Limited (HKCA), HKCA Director Chuang Shih-Ping said that the Central Government's ban on the Falun Gong cult had won strong support from people both of Hong Kong and of the mainland.

He said the fact that some 1,500 people gathered in Sunday's seminar proved that Hong Kong's mainstream society opposes the evil cult, Falun Gong, and is eager to promote the special administrative region's stability and prosperity.

Sheng Hui, vice chairman of the Chinese Buddhist Association, pointed out at the forum that Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong cult concocted the so-called Fa Lun Da Fa out of Buddhist terms with the vicious aim to cheat people and make money, thus hurting the feelings of all the Buddhism believers.

Tso Wung-wai, professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,held that there is no difference between the Falun Gong cult and those so-called "superfine function performance" designed for collecting money. If anything, the former is more deceiving.

Liu Tianjun, a professor with the Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, noted that Falun Gong misled people to run for hallucination, which in essence is a spiritual control.

Sister Angel Theresa Ying, vice chairman of the Administrative Committee of Catholic Church in Beijing, is also scheduled to speak at the two-day forum Monday.

Tsang Hin Chi, Chairman of Goldlion Holdings Limited, and HenryH.L. Hu, president of the Shue Yan College in Hong Kong, were officiating at Sunday's forum.