At the Fengtai Sports Centre in southwest Beijing, ``some'' Falun Gong practitioners continued to be penned in by police on Monday morning, a stadium worker told AFP.

He refused to say how many were still being held in the building or how long they had been there.

An official at central Beijing's Chaoyang Stadium told AFP the police had evacuated the premises by Monday morning, while the Shijingshan Stadium on the west side of the city had been cleared on Sunday evening.

China on Thursday banned the sect in a nationally televised broadcast, calling it an 11illegal organisation'' and forbidding the practice of its exercise routines in the toughest security measures since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The official China Daily on Mondayreported that sect members across China had been asked to turn over Falun Gong-related books, audio and video tapes to local authorities.

The crackdown had started on Tuesday July 20 -- after President Jiang Zemin reportedly held an emergency politburo meeting -- with reports of up to 2,000 practitioners being held in Shijingshan stadium.

The ruling Communist Party today also asked cadres who are members of the sect to sever their ties with the group and ``help realise communism in the country.''

Lashing out at errant cadres, some of whom became leading members of the Falun Gong, the mouthpiece of the party, the People's Daily called for ``strengthened discipline and intensified efforts to restore supremacy of Marxism in China.''