Mr. Zhang Haimin is 47 years old and lived at Qiaonan Erli, #277, Laofuma Village, Hongyazi Town of Xingcheng City, Liaoning Province.

On October 18, 1999, the police arrested Mr. Zhang because he practiced the Falun Gong exercises in public. Policeman Zhang Hongbing beat him with a baton for nearly two hours, until he lost consciousness. The beating left many long red marks on Mr. Zhang’s body.

On November 28, 1999, Mr. Zhang went to Beijing to appeal to the government to end the persecution of Falun Gong. He was arrested and detained in the Changping Detention Center in Beijing. He was forced to stand in the cold of winter for more than one hour, dressed only in his underwear, before they conducted the body search. On the first day of his detention, he was forced to squat down for the whole night. On the second day, the criminals brought him to the toilet, forced him to squat down, and then poured 50 basins of ice-cold water on his head. The guard cuffed his hands and feet together so he was unable to walk. The head of the detention center, Mr. Shi, boasted, “What is the law? In here I am the law and whatever I say is the law.”

On December 7, 1999, policeman Li Hongwei from the Ningyuan Police Station took Mr. Zhang to the police station in his hometown. Li grabbed a baton and struck him more than 50 times. Because he refused to renounce his belief in Falun Gong, the local policemen often came to harass him; he was detained many times. On February 9, 2001, he was sent to the Huludao Labor Camp. During the five months that he was in the labor camp, he was tortured to the point that he could not even get out of bed. After a hospital examination, he was diagnosed with hepatitis B. The labor camp released him on medical parole.

At approximately 9 p.m. on July 16, 2003, at the direction of Song Changjiang, the head of the Xingcheng City “610 Office,” policeman Zhang Lijun of the National Security Team of the Xingcheng City Public Security Bureau, leading other policemen, broke into Mr. Zhang’s home, ransacked it, and took away some Falun Gong materials. Mr. Zhang was not at home at that time, so the policemen took his wife (also a Falun Gong practitioner) and sent her to the Xingcheng Detention Center. On November 15, 2003, Mr. Zhang’s wife was sent to Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang City. To avoid further persecution, Mr. Zhang had to leave their home and wander from place to place.

type=Case, Torture; type=Detention Center, Changping Detention Center; type=Labor Camp, Huludao Labor Camp; location=Beijing; location=Liaoning, Xingcheng