January 17, 2001

It was his first full day of freedom in nearly six months, and a weary KunLun Zhang - it is less than a week since his release from a notorious Chinese labour camp - passed the time chatting with his hosts in a cosy Kanata home, napping away his jet lag and quietly pondering the horrific ordeal he's finally managed to put behind him.

The 60-year-old professor of sculpture, now the world's best known victim of China's brutal crackdown against the meditation movement Falun Gong, visited with his daughter LingDi and a few other Ottawa-area practitioners. But he spent most of the day resting after he arrived at the Ottawa airport shortly after midnight to a crowd of cheering supporters.

"He is very tried now," said LingDi Zhang, the University of Ottawa student whose emotional appeal to the Canadian government last November launched the global pressure campaign that eventually resulted in Mr. Zhang's release this week.

Another of his liberators, Falun Gong's Ottawa co-ordinator Lucy Zhou, said Mr. Zhang is "really grateful" to be free but hasn't yet absorbed the fact that his imprisonment sparked an international outcry.

"He doesn't realize that it became such a big thing," said Ms. Zhou, who rallied media and politicians to Mr. Zhang's plight.

She added that his thoughts are still largely occupied by his wife, ShuMei, and her ailing mother, who remain in China.

Grace Wollensak, who also practices Falun Gong in Ottawa and had a brief conversation with Mr. Zhang yesterday, said he has finally figured out why the abusive treatment he endured for months after his arrest last July suddenly stopped in November.

"He mentioned that at the beginning he was beaten and tortured with electric shocks, even two batons at one time," said Ms. Wollensak. "Then everything changed and they didn't hit him. And he understood later it was because of the media attention over here."

Instead of physical abuse, said Ms. Wollensak, he was subjected to continuous - sometimes around-the-clock - "persuasion" sessions. Prison guards and even, on one occasion, a high-ranking government official from Beijing tried to convince him to renounce Falun Gong.

Ms. Wollensak said Mr. Zhang described horrid conditions at the Wangcun labour camp, nicknamed "hell on earth" by human rights organizations because of routine reports of torture death.

She said Mr. Zhang was held in a single room housing 18 prisoners, all of whom ate, slept and used the toilet within plain view of each other.

"He said there was this great pressure on him to change his mind," she said.

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