A Christian activist and his brother were stopped by plain-clothes security officers in Beijing at 6am yesterday as they bicycled toward Kuanjie Protestant Church where US President George W. Bush was to worship later.
Hua Huilin, 52, said he and his younger brother, Hua Huiqi, 46, were stopped and bundled into two different cars in Nanchizi Road next to the Forbidden City.
'They grabbed my brother's neck and pushed him into the car,' Hua Huilin said.
Hua Huiqi, a 'house church' leader and activist in relation to forced evictions, was baptised in Kuanjie church in a quiet hutong in Beijing's East District in the early 1990s and had been a regular worshipper there for a couple of years, his brother said.
But he had stopped attending because it had become a state-sanctioned institution, according to his friend, Xu Yonghai.
'He told me last night [Saturday] that he might go to Kuanjie because Bush would be there,' Mr Xu said.