Mr. Fan Dezhen, 33, was a Falun Dafa practitioner who lived in Huludao City, Liaoning Province. Mr. Fan had been been detained and violently beaten multiple times. In 2001 he went to Beijing to appeal and was detained in the Huludao Labor Camp for three years. In order to force him give up his faith, several guards shocked him simultaneously with electric batons, and beat him cruelly, causing his whole body to be injured and swollen, and his face to be deformed. In October 2002, he went on hunger strike to protest the persecution. Guards directed prisoners to cuff his wrists and shackle his ankles onto a metal bed frame all day, and brutally force-fed him. Once the tube was inserted into his lung, it almost choked him to death. Guards released him when he was dying. Afterwards, he had to leave home and do odd jobs to survive.

On April 1, 2004, Mr. Fan was followed when going to a fellow practitioner's home, and was arrested by police waiting in the house. He was detained in the Huludao City Detention Center, and again was cruelly beaten, force-fed, and released when his life was in danger.

On September 17, 2005, Mr. Fan was working on the second floor of Huludao City House Appliance Shopping Mall, when a few plainclothes police arrested him at 2 p.m. and handcuffed him. He was taken to the Huludao City Labor Camp to serve a second forced labor term, where he was tortured many times again.

On February 25, 2008, Suizhong County Domestic Security Division Leader Li Changhua (male) arrested eleven practitioners, including Mr. Fan and his wife Yang Xiaoxue. Mr. Fan died at around 7 a.m. on April 20, 2008 in the Suizhong County Detention Center. Surviving are his wife and a nine month old baby. Officers notified his family after 4 p.m. Mr. Fan's family requested to see his body the next morning, but were refused. They said if they wanted to see the body, to come back that evening, because there would be an autopsy and cremation the next day. They would only see his ashes if they came the next day.