Mr. Zhang Shengfan, a disabled resident of Shuangcheng City, Heilongjiang Province, died in police custody on June 12, 2001, just a few days after police dragged him from his home. Sources say Mr. Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, had been beaten to death. He was 38 years old.

His neighbors said he had been frequently harassed by people from the neighborhood committee and police sub-station, and had been detained time and again. Within the span of just four months, he was detained four times. This was all because he was a Falun Gong practitioner. Zhang Shengfan's arrest was apparently part of a larger dragnet operation ordered by Zhu Qingwen, Secretary of the City of Shuangcheng around that time. Local residents say police vehicles had been dispatched to almost every corner of the city to find and arrest Falun Gong practitioners.

On June 11, the Chinese authorities launched their newly released declaratory statute that was specifically written for Falun Gong. A day later, Zhang Shengfan died from torture. According to the new declaratory statute, the authorities will treat Falun Gong as a "reactionary political organization." People arrested on such a charge would traditionally be given extremely harsh punishments. Sources say police suspected Zhang of printing documents about the persecution against Falun Gong, thus he may have been one of the first victims of this new directive from the central government to intensify the persecution.