(Minghui.org) A 78-year-old retired health official in Gulin County, Sichuan Province was sentenced to nine years in October 2023 for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Mr. Hu Biao was arrested on September 28, 2022. He was transferred from the Gulin County Detention Center to the Jiazhou Prison on November 3, 2023.
This is not the first time that Mr. Hu has been targeted for his faith during the past 24 years of persecution. He was thrice given forced labor in the early years of the persecution, including one year and nine months given in 1999, one year given in 2001, and three years given in 2004. He was arrested again in 2009 and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. He was released on September 29, 2013.
On December 13, 2019, six years after Mr. Hu’s prison release, the Gulin County Social Security Bureau suddenly called him, ordering him to return an “overpayment” of 231,816.42 yuan by March 2020. The “overpayment” was the pension payments issued to him to during his 4.5-year prison term.
Mr. Hu refused to pay because the pension benefits were his lawfully earned assets. The social security bureau and the police then began to harass him and his family. He was forced to live away from home, but was arrested in Renhuai City, Guizhou Province on September 28, 2022. He was taken back to Gulin and held in Gulin County Detention Center.
Mr. Hu’s son, a physician whose health clinic had been raided by police as they attempted to find out about his father’s whereabouts, ended up paying the 231,816.42 yuan on his father’s behalf in order to avoid further trouble. He also paid a total of 21,500 yuan in fines levied by the local health and business agencies overseeing his clinic. He thought that’d be it, but the police still ordered him to persuade his father to renounce Falun Gong.
Dr. Hu knew his father would never give up his belief because there was nothing wrong with practicing Falun Gong, and the police kept harassing him and threatened to shut down his clinic and implicate his wife and son. He felt hopeless and helpless, and sold his clinic.
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