BEIJING (Reuters) - Police detained about 40 Western members of the Falun Gong spiritual group Thursday after they briefly threw Tiananmen Square into chaos with scattered protests against a crackdown on their faith, state media and witnesses said.
A Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York said the demonstration was to highlight China's persecution of the movement ahead of a visit to Beijing by President Bush in a week.
Clusters of demonstrators pulled out yellow banners hidden under their clothes and shouted "Falun Gong is good!" in a protest against China's campaign to stamp out the spiritual movement it has branded an [Jiang's regime's slandeous words] and banned since 1999.
Several of the protesters, mostly young men and women, sprinted across the vast plaza waving banners and screaming slogans as hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes police officers chased after them.
Police tackled demonstrators to the ground, kicking and punching some of them in the face, before wrestling them into police vans, witnesses said.
Astonished Chinese tourists, sightseeing on the square in the heart of Beijing for the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays, crowded round to watch as almost every Westerner on the square was detained for protesting.
Altogether, the drama lasted about 15 minutes.
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SECOND DEMO IN A WEEK
It was the second demonstration this week by Western Falun Gong members in Tiananmen and security on the square was unusually tight, with police officers checking foreigners' identity papers and searching their bags.
China expelled a Canadian and an American follower of the movement Tuesday, one day after they protested in Tiananmen to highlight the issue before Bush's visit on February 21-22.
"Members of various countries decided to go there to expose the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong in China," said Gail Rachlin, a spokeswoman for Falun Gong in New York.
"There are innocent people being tortured and persecuted," she told Reuters. "We want President Bush to bring up this issue in his meeting with President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites)."
Rachlin said 14 more Western followers of Falun Gong were seized by police from their Beijing hotel rooms overnight and another seven from Germany were detained Thursday morning.
All the protesters were Westerners and several were from Britain, she said.
There was no immediate comment from the British or German embassies or from the Chinese government on how the protesters would be treated.
China expelled 35 foreign Falun Gong members after they protested on the square in November and another Canadian woman for a Falun Gong protest there last month.
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