Victims:

Ms. Yu Yingzhang, 69 years old, retired teacher from the Deaf and Blind People’s School in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province; she was awarded an “exemplary teacher” designation;

Mr. Zhang Peng, 27 years old, Ms. Yu Yingzhang’s son, teacher at the Zaozhuang Normal School, Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province.

In February 2000, Mr. Zhang Peng went to Beijing to appeal to the government to stop the persecution of Falun Gong and was detained for 15 days. In July 2000, Wang Qizhong, Xing Lin, and Liu Jingliang from the Zaozhuang Police Department’s Yicheng Branch searched their house, impounded a computer, and caused him more than 20,000 Yuan in direct financial losses[1].

On October 1, 2000, Mr. Zhang went to Beijing to appeal to the government again and was detained in the Fangshan Detention Center in Beijing. Later, the local police escorted him back home and detained him in the Zaozhuang No. 2 Detention Center. They charged his family a 3,000 Yuan “travel fee” and 7,000 Yuan in other fees. On November 6, they sent him to the Zaozhuang Labor Camp for two years of forced labor.  

On January 5, 2001, Mr. Zhang and 16 other Falun Gong practitioners were taken to the Wangcun Labor Camp in Zibo City, Shandong Province. During this period, Mr. Zhang resisted all attempts to force him to renounce his belief in Falun Gong. Once, during a national flag-raising ceremony, he shouted, “Falun Dafa is good.” The police seized him by the hair, beat him with their fists, and hit him on the head with a stool. His nose and ears were bleeding, but the police still tried to force him to write a “guarantee letter”[2] .

On February 22, 2001, Mr. Zhang and two other Falun Gong practitioners, Xu Ming and Guo Jialong, were escorted to the Zaozhuang No. 3 Hospital (a mental hospital), where they were psychologically tortured. In the hospital, Mr. Zhang firmly demonstrated that he was clear-headed and that he had no illnesses. However, the doctors and nurses said that they had to follow their supervisors’ orders. They tied him to the bed and gave him injections against his will. Mr. Zhang became dull-looking, drooled, and had incontinence of feces and urine. The authorities then fabricated a story that his condition was caused by practicing Falun Gong.

Mr. Zhang’s father used every effort to rescue his son. On July 9, 2001, after Mr. Zhang had endured five months of torture in the mental hospital, he was finally released. His family was forced to pay the hospital 6,800 Yuan for expenses incurred while torturing their son.

On February 4, 2004, the police arrested Mr. Zhang while he was distributing materials that explained the truth about Falun Gong, and detained him at the Zaozhuang No. 1 Detention Center. After the police forced his father to pay 5,000 Yuan as bail, they sent Mr. Zhang to a forced brainwashing center. On March 5, 2004, the police escorted him to the Zaozhuang Mental Hospital for further persecution.

At noon on April 30, 2001, five policemen from Fankekou Police Branch broke into Ms. Yu Yingzhang’s home, ransacked it without a search warrant, and confiscated all Falun Gong books and audiotapes. They also detained Ms. Yu for 28 days in the Zaozhuang No. 2 Labor Camp.

Since Ms. Yu was persistent in her Falun Gong practice, the police sentenced her to two years of forced labor. Later, her husband asked a lot of people for help and scraped together 3,000 Yuan in bail to bring her home. However, the police would not let her go so easily. They asked her to come to the police station three times a day to sign her name, and they put her under house arrest. Her work unit sent staff members to her house to monitor her 24 hours a day. She did not have any personal freedom at all.

On September 24, 2002, Zhang Kai, Gao Tan, and two others from the Shengli Road Residents’ Committee arrested Ms. Yu and forced her to attend brainwashing sessions, threatening to dismiss her from job and to send her to a labor camp if she refused. She is still detained at the Zaozhuang No. 2 Detention Center.