Mr. Zhang Yunping, 58, Hebei

Name: Mr. Zhang Yunping (???)
Gender: Male
Age: 58
Employer: Tangshan Steel Group Service Company
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 30, 2003
Date of Death: September 6, 2010
Province: Hebei
Most Recent Place of Detention: Jidong Prison

Case details:

Zhang was a former employee of the Tangshan Steel Group Service Company. Following the launch of the Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong, the firm’s management and security personnel actively participated in persecuting him. At the end of 2000, the company suspended him from his position and turned him over to a “brainwashing” center located at the Tangshan Textile and Garment School. During the two months that Zhang was held at the center, he was subjected to endless doses of anti-Falun Gong propaganda, relentless efforts to force him to renounce his faith, and his company deducted 2,500 yuan from his annual salary.

After retiring in 2001, Zhang fled home to escape consistent harassment from the firm’s management. In 2002, an agent from the company’s police unit abducted and threatened Zhang’s wife in a bid to discover his whereabouts. The following year, his pension was suspended, leaving the entire family in a difficult economic situation.

After searching for nearly two years, the Hebei authorities captured Zhang on March 30, 2003. Shortly afterwards, a judge at Lubei District Court “sentenced” him in a sham trial to eight years in a prison camp. In April 2004, Zhang was taken to Jidong Prison. 

Due to the harsh conditions at the prison camp, his health deteriorated and he became increasingly weak, but was forced to continue to perform hard labor as late as August 2009. A wound on his finger from a nail became infected, but prison officials delayed hospital treatment until late September, at which point Mr. Zhang was also diagnosed with diabetes and tuberculosis.  

Following repeated pleas from his family, prison officials released Zhang on medical parole in February 2010. He never recovered from the injuries and diseases incurred in custody and died on September 6, 2010. A series of photos taken by acquaintances less than a week before his death and smuggled out of China show Zhang both emaciated and bloated.