(Minghui.org) After 23 years of persecution of Falun Gong, Mr. Zhang Weiqing, once a handsome and energetic young man, has become haggard and exhausted due to constant harassment and incarceration.

The 43-year-old Xianning City, Hubei Province resident was recently sentenced again for his faith and taken to the Fanjiatai Prison. According to an insider, he is being forced to stand for long hours every day for not giving up Falun Gong.

Mr. Zhang was arrested on April 20, 2020 after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong. Two other practitioners who went with him, Ms. Ding Xiaolan and Ms. She Qinghua, were arrested as well and held at the Tongshan County Detention Center for 15 days. It’s not clear whether they were sentenced.

Mr. Zhang was first held at the Chibi City Detention Center, and transferred to the Xian’an District Detention Center a month later. The Xian’an District Procuratorate approved the arrest.

Mr. Zhang’s family was kept in the dark of his situation for the next two years. They just learned recently that he had been taken to the prison, but information such as when he was sentenced and the length of his prison term remain unclear.

Mr. Zhang took up Falun Gong in 1996 while he was still in high school. After graduating, he was admitted to the law school at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. After the onset of the persecution, he was arrested multiple times and fired from his job.

Mr. Zhang was arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in March 2002. An officer slapped him in the face hundreds of times. When he held a hunger strike to protest the persecution, he was tied up to a wood board in a spread eagle position and force fed through a nasogastric tube. He escaped from the detention center after being taken back to Hubei and was forced to live away from home to hide from the police.

It didn’t take long for the police to find Mr. Zhang in Shiyan City (about 350 miles from Xianning), and he was arrested in late April 2002. He was put in criminal detention and relentlessly tortured, including being hung up by his wrists with his feet barely touching the ground, stabbed in the face with a ballpoint pen, pinched on the nose, and force fed.

Mr. Zhang was arrested again at work on October 13, 2015. After one night at the Xian’an District Lockup, he was taken to the notorious Banqiao Brainwashing Center, also known as the Hubei Province Legal Education Center.

The Xian’an District Procuratorate approved Mr. Zhang’s arrest in January 2016 and later indicted him with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners.

Mr. Zhang appeared at the Xian’an District Court on May 10, 2017. As the authorities did not allow local lawyers to enter a not guilty plea for him, he acted as his own lawyer. He pointed out that no law has ever criminalized Falun Gong in China, and testified against the police for violating legal procedures in handling his case. The judge nonetheless sentenced him to a two-year prison term.

All Falun Gong practitioners who are sentenced to prison in Hubei Province are incarcerated at the Fanjiatai Prison. The prison has ten wards, with all newly admitted practitioners usually being held in the tenth ward, where they are subjected to intensive brainwashing and torture aimed at forcing them to renounce their faith.