Zhang Jiuhai, a Beijing resident, died in early 2023, about one and half years after he was released from serving a 4-year term for practicing Falun Gong. He was 56.

When Zhang was first arrested in 2000 for practicing Falun Gong, he was only 33.

Zhang was predeceased by both of his parents. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, the three of them were arrested one after another and spent limited time together.

Falun Gong is a mind and body practice based on universal principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since its introduction in 1992, the cultivation practice has benefited more than a hundred million practitioners worldwide.

However, Falun Gong believers have been subject to severe persecution by the regime.

On July 20, 1999, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin began the persecution of Falun Gong when the number of Chinese people practicing had grown larger than the CCP, and while people were enthusiastically embracing it across China.

After more than two decades of brutal persecution, an unknown number of practitioners have been persecuted to death.

Zhang had experienced a recent four-year illegal imprisonment. In total, he had been detained 12 times before he passed away, according to a Minghui.org report. Minghui is a U.S.-based online platform that reports on the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong in China.

After Zhang was released in May 2021 from serving a four-year term, he struggled with poor health from the torture he had endured in custody.

For more than 20 years, what Zhang and his parents suffered under the persecution is similar to the stories of what other countless Falun Gong believers and their families have endured, including illegal ransacking of their homes, confiscation of personal belongings or money, beatings, constant harassment, house surveillance, violent forced feeding, injection of unknown drugs, brainwashing sessions, shocking with electric baton shockings, and numerous other torture methods during the illegal imprisonment.

For instance, in 2002, the police abducted Zhang’s parents and kept them in forced labor camps for two years.

At the time, Zhang himself was already illegally detained in a forced labor camp.

In 2003, he was put into the “assault class” where he was confined to sit on a small chair. He would be beaten when he moved a little. As a result, he had four broken ribs and a broken right cheekbone. Sitting for more than 20 hours a day for a long time had led him to urinate blood.

He went on hunger strike many times to protest such brutal torture.

In 2006, a group of officers again broke into Zhang’s home and ransacked it in the middle of the night. They also took his mother to the Liujiadian Police Station and held her there briefly.

On March 29, 2012, police kidnapped him when he was distributing information on a bus about Falun Gong and the persecution by the CCP. He was illegally sentenced to two years of forced labor at Xin’an Forced Labor Camp, where he was forcibly fed with unknown tablets.

Zhang was arrested one more time on July 8, 2014, after being reported for distributing Falun Gong materials. The police confiscated his laptop, printer, Falun Gong books, and related materials from his home.

Living in fear for years, Zhang’s mother was devastated by his arrest and passed away on Nov. 6, 2014. Following Zhang’s last arrest in May 2017, his father had a broken rib and was unable to care for himself.

The elderly man died seven months later in destitution.