Police have detained about 40 Western members of the Falun Gong group after they protested in Tiananmen Square against a crackdown on their faith, state media 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 US President Mr George W. Bush in a week.
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 "evil cult" and banned since 1999.
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.
The official Xinhua news agency said police had detained 40 foreign Falun Gong followers, including a number of Britons, "who agitated for the evil cult and produced uproars" on the square.
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 US follower of the movement on Tuesday, a day after they protested in Tiananmen Square.
