I am embarrassed and ashamed to be part of a country that does this to innocent Falung Dafa practitioners.
http://www.iht.com/articles/67762.html
I am asking myself why our police are not employed doing useful things like dealing with the horrific traffic situation, cleaning up crime, protecting children etc... not arresting people who were quietly protesting against the arrest of some of their colleagues practising on the Mainland. I thought we were a Special Zone since the handover, not a part of the dreadful system in mainland China. This is ominous for Hong Kong people.

It sounds pretty ominous. Is this an isolated case though, or have there been others?

It's the first time in Hong Kong. Plenty in the mainland, where people have been tortured and imprisoned. Here , for this case , they are saying that the demonstrators caused a riot... , they have not been prosecuted for their beliefs (they say), only for the disruptive nature of their demo. We have something called the Public Order Ordinance(the POO!!!), which limits the number who can demonstrate at one time... very cleverly some students demonstrating recently took it in turns and changed shifts of the legal number of people there. Hong Kong people are not stupid and there are definite rumbles about this infringement of human rights. The HK Government is on dodgy enough ground , having not been constitutionally elected. This will cause further dissent.

I had an interesting discussion with some people from Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago and they were, like you, a little leery of the government. They seemed to feel nothing much was going to change, but at the same time they looked a little grim. Is there a big international community in Hong Kong? I don't suppose people are planning to leave just yet, but do you think it might be a possibililty one day?

Thank you for that link Sara, I have just sent it to my daughter who is, as you probably remember, doing her PhD on the right to protest.

I am not passing the buck here , but there are so many excellent articles on the situation, particularly by CNN whose reporting seems unbiased and most careful.Try:
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/25/hk.expats/
for a start. They put it so much better than I can.

Interesting article! Thank you.

It certainly looks like a cause for concern. How were protests handled under British rule? Were there any? If so, were they restricted as to size, activities, etc.?

Under Brit rule? I would have to check , but I don't remember the Falun Gong being arrested on the Mainland.( I may be wrong) , so it wouldn't arise. There were other protests though ( The biggest one being those protests about the Tiananmen Massacre. The Sunday after it , nearly the whole of Hong Kong marched through the streets , shouting protests and waving banners condemning China's actions. No one cracked down, in fact the polce joined it. I know, I was there with my family. There was not one arrest that day, that I saw. Things have changed in that respect for sure.

The 'culprits ' were fined, refused to pay , and a 'mystery benefactor 'paid the fines for them . It is thought that it was done by a HK government official!
The police have now been accused of rough tactics again this week , when they confiscated the loud hailer being used by some other protesters (demonstrating about unemployment). Their response was that some members of the public had complained about the noise. The response to this was that , in the event of a complaint about noise from neighbours, would the police confiscate their Mahjong Tiles?? The Police here are getting a bad image.