Two human-rights activists from Massachusetts claimed Monday that they were detained and beaten while in China last week.
NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that the two were part of a group protesting the Chinese government's crackdown on practitioners of Falun Gong, a type of meditation that is illegal in China.
"The Chinese government was picking up anyone who walked on the street who was Western," Riorodan Galuccio of West Roxbury said. "They were not discriminating against anyone, because they did not know who was a Falun Gong practitioner and who was not."
Galuccio and Maria Salzman, of Quincy, Mass., said that they were demonstrating in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Valentine's Day, protesting the government's practice of arresting Falun Gong practitioners. The government has banned Falun Gong because it says it is a cult, but practitioners say it is not a religion, but rather a meditative exercise that will improve health.
"The reason why I was beaten and tortured and detained was for shouting three words: Falun Dafa is good," Galuccio said. "Police on the square and military personnel extended all their available means to try to keep us from letting anyone around there know what we were saying."
Salzman said that they were trying to make other Chinese residents aware of what was going on.
"They don't know what happens," she said. "A lot of people really don't know that practitioners are being persecuted and tortured to death. And when they do, they're truly shocked, because not all Chinese people are bad."
Though the two activists were released and returned to the United States, six of the protesters still remain detained in China.