•Most Christians in China worship in secret. They hold Mass in the middle of the night, changing locations to avoid police raids. (ABC News 20 Nov. 2005.)

•Nearly 2,000 Chistians are arrested in China every year.

• Pastor Cai Zhuohua, leader of an underground church community, was jailed for two years in 2005 for printing and distributing Bibles.

•Liu Xianzhi was severely beaten and tortured for being a member of an underground church. Religious persecution has accelerated in the last few years as the Chinese government attempts to put a halt to the rapid growth of the Chinese church.

•The Chinese have arrested hundreds of thousands of practitioners of the Falun Gong, a system of mind and body cultivation related to Buddhism. Well over 100,000 have been sent, without trial, to labour camps; some to mental institutions. Prison sentences are as long as 18 years, and there are more than 38,000 documented cases of torture. Methods include stun guns applied to the face or thrust into the mouth or vagina.

•Bu Dongwei is a Falun Gong practitioner who worked for the US-based Asia Foundation. He was not tried but was sentenced to 2-1/2 years to Re-education Through Labor (RTL). The evidence was a oral confession and 80 copies of Falun Gong literature the police said they discovered in his home.