Five American protesters deported by China told a crowd of hundreds in Union Square yesterday that they had been “brutalized a little bit” by Chinese soldiers for their pro-Tibet demonstrations in Beijing.

The protesters, members of an activist group based in New York that organizes nonviolent demonstrations to draw global support for Tibetan independence from China, Students for a Free Tibet, have called for a boycott of the Olympics until China recognizes Tibet as its own country.

“We need an Olympics of liberty, not an Olympics of oppression,” activist Jonathan Stribling-Uss, who said he was tackled by police outside the Chinese National Stadium, said.

Three of the five activists were deported for raising Tibetan flags, which are banned in China, before the opening ceremony near the stadium last week. The other two were a part of a group who wrapped themselves in Tibetan flags on Saturday in Tiananmen Square, the site of the 1989 student killings, and pretended to be dead.

Yesterday the crowd, many clutching Tibetan flags, gathered in the rain to listen to the speakers, singing Tibetan songs in between speeches.

“I got a little hurt when I was taken to the ground, but that does not compare to what is happening in Tibet,” the organization’s grassroots coordinator and one of the protesters, Kalaya’an Mendoza, said.

Five more pro-Tibet protesters were arrested yesterday in China.

Mr. Mendoza, 29, told The New York Sun that more protests involving the Tibetan flag are planned in China, and that the group also is organizing a New York City march to the Chinese consulate from City Hall on August 24.