The spiritual movement is banned by the Chinese Communist Party.

Three followers of the I-Kuan Tao movement, all of whom are in their seventies, were detained in a raid on a scripture-reading gathering at a private residence in Zhongshan city, Lo Wen-jia, who heads Taiwan’s semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, told reporters in Taipei as quoted by Radio Free Asia.

“Around Oct. 10 this year, police suddenly entered a private residence in Zhongshan, China to arrest the people inside,” Lo said. “The number of people who were present is unclear.”

“Three of them are elderly I-Kuan Tao followers from Taiwan, in their 70s,” he said. “They were reading I-Kuan Tao scriptures with local people.”

I-Kuan Tao is a Chinese salvationist religious sect that emerged in the late 19th century, in Shandong, to become China's most important redemptive society in the 1930s and 1940s, especially during the Japanese invasion.