A US Presbyterian minister has said he was arrested by the Secret Service after praying on a pavement outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, had also laid a red carpet on the pavement bearing the names of people and groups persecuted by the Chinese government, including Zion Church pastors, and Hong Kong Catholic media tycoon Jimmy Lai.
The incident on Monday came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US for a summit with President Trump.
Mahoney claims Chinese officials told the Secret Service the pavement was embassy property. When he refused to leave, insisting it was public, he was then handcuffed. He says he has demonstrated there dozens of times without being arrested.
Speaking in a video he posted to Facebook he said: "I have been here dozens of times. It is tragic that I'm being treated like a Chinese citizen. This is a sad day in America, when an American citizen, a clergyman, who's praying on a public sidewalk in America, is arrested for celebrating the First Amendment."
Mahoney has a history of public protest. According to NBC he was detained in China in 2008 by police after protesting in Tiananmen Square and then deported.
Mahoney is the former national leader of Operation Rescue a prominent anti-abortion organisation originally founded in the 1980's.