(Minghui.org) On October 6, 2025, the Mid-Autumn Festival (a holiday for family reunions), Mr. Zhang Zhirong’s family was notified that he had been sentenced to four years for his faith in Falun Gong.
Mr. Zhang, a 56-year-old farmer in Laixi City, Shandong Province, was arrested on September 26, 2024, by officers from the Laixi City Domestic Security Office and the Shuiji Police Station. After over a year in the Laixi City Detention Center, he was convicted and transferred to Shandong Province Prison in the capital city of Jinan. He became emaciated as a result of abuse in custody.
Mr. Zhang’s arrest and sentencing were hard on his parents, who are in their 80s. His mother fell ill last year. With no retirement income, his father makes a living picking and selling recyclable waste. Mr. Zhang’s wife is doing odd jobs to pay for their child’s college education.
Past Persecution
Mr. Zhang started to practice Falun Gong in 1997. Months after the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution in July 1999, he went to to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong and was arrested by officers from the Qingdao Liaison Office in Beijing (Qingdao oversees Laixi). He was detained for a day in Beijing and then escorted back to Laixi. The police detained him for another day, seized the over 1,000 yuan in cash he had on him, and forced him to squat for three hours.
Mr. Zhang returned to Beijing to appeal in late October 2000 and was arrested on Tiananmen Square. He and 12 other practitioners from around the country who had come to Beijing to appeal were taken to the Miyun District Detention Center in the suburbs. The police tortured Mr. Zhang for over two hours to try to force him to reveal his name and address. He refused to comply and was soaked in ice-cold water for over an hour.
Mr. Zhang was arrested again in late October 2001 when he challenged the local police to explain why they were persecuting Falun Gong. Four plainclothes officers from the Laixi City Police Department grabbed him by his hair, pushed him down, stomped on his face and head, and kicked him for over 30 minutes. Then they handcuffed him and took him to the Laiyang City Detention Center, where the guards instigated the inmates to beat and verbally abuse him. He was released a month later.
Mr. Zhang was given a two-year labor camp term and fined 5,000 yuan in November 2002 by the village committee. In the Qingdao City Forced Labor Camp, the guards deprived him of sleep for two days when he refused to renounce Falun Gong.
After Mr. Zhang was released in late May 2004 (six months ahead of time), he tried to get the village committee to return the 5,000 yuan they’d fined him. Instead of returning the money, the village committee officials had the police arrest him again and sent to the Qingdao City Forced Labor Camp for another two years. He was watched by four inmates around the clock. He wasn’t allowed to leave the room unless he wrote a statement to renounce Falun Gong. He was later forced to work more than ten hours at a stretch assembling electronic devices and sometimes not allowed to go to bed until midnight.
The police showed up at Mr. Zhang’s door on August 9, 2017. When he refused to let them in, they called in the village security officer. Mr. Zhang still refused to open the door or talk to the security officer.
A police officer in uniform and an officer in plainclothes knocked on Mr. Zhang’s door twice on October 26, 2017. He wasn’t home and his parents condemned the officers for persecuting him. The officers threatened to come back.
Mr. Zhang and his wife were harassed by two officers from the Shuiji Police Station just as they returned home after 6 p.m. the next day.
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