Mr. Zhang Shushan, male, 61, resident of Fifth Dujia Group, Shuangyang District, Changchun City, Jilin Province.

Mr. Zhang was a Falun Gong practitioner. After the government started persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, he went to Beijing to appeal to the government to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. Because of that, he was detained for fifteen days. In January 2001, he walked more than twenty days to Tiananmen Square to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. As a result of his appeal, he was sentenced to two years of forced labor and detained in the Chaoyanggou Labor Camp in Changchun City.

One night in April 2002, because Mr. Zhang refused to give up Falun Gong, Deputy Director Liu Wenrui of the Third Ward and a guard named Peng beat and tortured him. They struck him hard with the handle of a shovel, shocked him with an electric baton and whipped him with a belt. They tortured him for several hours. Then they dragged him to a restroom, stripped him naked, poured cold water over his body, and shocked him again with the electric baton. Finally, they poured a salt solution on his wounds.

On February 25, 2003, Mr. Zhang's two year term ended. However, instead of releasing him, the Shuangyang District 610 Office sent him to the Xinglongshan Forced Brainwashing Center because he continued to practice Falun Gong. Due to the relentless abuse and the poor living environment in detention, Mr. Zhang suffered from scabies. When the scabies developed into a severe condition, the authorities injected him with an unknown drug that made his legs turn dark and swollen. Because of torture, he was very weak and appeared to be dying. The police were afraid to be held responsible for his death, and notified his family to pick him up at the end of March 2003. He was quite ill and undernourished upon returning home. Mr. Zhang never recovered. His health continued to deteriorate and he eventually died on February 27, 2005.

type=case,death;type=labor camp, Chaoyanggou Labor Camp;location=Jilin, Changchun