China announced on Wednesday that it has rounded up more than 1,500 alleged cult members on the heels of a violent incident in a McDonald's restaurant where a group of devotees have beaten a woman to death.

The cult members have been detained and 59 of them were given prison terms, according to a Xinhua News Agency report cited by Mercury News. The place of the arrests is yet to be confirmed, but reports have said some of the arrests took place two years back.

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The report, which was posted on Wednesday, seems to be the government's effort to pacify the public after cult adherents have sparked outrage and have been blamed for violence and other illegal activities.

Based on the reports, some of the arrested cult members were to spend up to four years in prison for "using a cult organization" to interfere with law enforcement. Some of the accusations included the use of threat, violent actions, and other illegal methods of increasing their memberships and expanding their groups.

The detainees were allegedly members of the Disciples Sect and the Church of Almighty God. These groups base their practices on unorthodox version of the Christian scripture.

Six members from the Church of Almighty God face charges for beating a woman to death last month at a McDonald's branch in the city of Zhaoyuan. The victim reportedly refused to give the suspects her phone number during a recruitment campaign.

The group's Chinese name "Quannengshen" means "All-powerful spirit." This group was founded in the province of Heilongjiang in the 1990s and later branched out to the eastern provinces of China, based on Chinese media reports.

China has at times experienced difficulty in controlling grassroots religious groups that are founded on Christian or Buddhist principles. The Falungong meditation movement, which managed to recruit millions of devotees before a crackdown in 1999, is one of the most notable among such groups.

TagsMcDonald's Murder, Chinese cult murders, Quannengshen, Church of Almighty God