Additional Information on Mr. Zhang Wenya's Death as a Result of Persecution

Falun Gong Practitioner Mr. Zhang Wenya from Changchun City, Jilin Province died as a result of persecution by the police from the Xian City Police Department in Shanxi Province on April 22nd, 2001. Mr. Zhang's family took his cremated remains back to Changchun City on June 24th, 2001. Officers from Xian City Police Department informed Mr. Zhang's family of his death two months after his actual death. When his family arrived at Xian City, they observed that his body was dark and without clothes. A police officer deceived his family by claiming that Mr. Zhang had jumped off a building and killed himself. The police played a videotape of it for his family.

Mr. Zhang Wenya was in his forties and a clerk from the Xinlicheng Savings Bank in Nanguan District, Changchun City. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, Mr. Zhang went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong to the authorities. As a result, he was arrested and taken back to Changchun City. He was imprisoned at the Daguang Detention Centre for fifteen days. He was arrested again in 2001 when he was promoting Falun Gong in Xian City.

Below is an account of the persecution suffered by Mr. Zhang Wenya as told by a fellow practitioner who was arrested with him.

Mr. Zhang Wenya and I were arrested on the same day, in the morning. That day it was raining lightly. More than thirty practitioners were arrested that day. The police took over a hotel and held each practitioner in a separate room. They forcibly took photographs of the practitioners and interrogated them using torture.

Two police officers tortured me in my room. At first, I didn't know that Mr. Zhang was detained next to my room. I only heard the sounds of a person being beaten and hit with a chair. After a while, I heard several screams, and only then did I recognize that they were cries from Mr. Zhang Wenya. I don't know what they did to him.

At around 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., I heard Mr. Zhang's door open. Then police started shouting, "Stop him quickly! Don't let him run away! Close the front door!" While the police were panicking, I heard the sound of a person hitting the ground. I thought at the time that the person who fell from the building must be hurt badly because we were on the third floor. Soon I heard people shouting, "Quickly! Check his pulse! Call the ambulance!"

Later, two more police officers came to my room. I asked one of the officers who fell from the building. The police replied, "A cat." I asked him again, "If a cat fell, why would you need to check its pulse and call an ambulance? If this practitioner's life is in danger, you all will need to take full responsibility!" That evening we were transferred to a detention centre and from then on, I don't know what happened to Mr. Zhang.

Recently, I heard that Mr. Zhang had died as a result of the persecution. The time he died matches the date we were arrested by police in 2001. The police fabricated a story that Mr. Zhang had committed "suicide." Practitioners treasure their lives and definitely would not commit suicide. Although Mr. Zhang jumped from the building, it was because the police were brutally torturing him. The officers from the police department should take full responsibility for Mr. Zhang's death.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/7/26/182807.html