Former Tax Bureau Employee Sentenced to 1.5 Years for Practicing Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) Days before the 2023 Chinese New Year (on January 22), a Guangshui City, Hubei Province resident was sentenced to 1.5 years and fined 5,000 yuan for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. He has appealed the verdict.

Prior to his latest sentencing, Mr. Chen Quanlong once served a three-year term and was fired from his job by the local tax bureau.

Mr. Chen, 61, was arrested in July 2022, after being reported for telling people about Falun Gong. The police searched his two residences and confiscated his eight Falun Gong books. He was put under residential surveillance on July 24. The Guangshui City Procuratorate on September 15, 2022, indicted him with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used against Falun Gong, and moved his case to the Guangshui City Court, which convicted him in mid-January 2023.

Previous Persecution

Before Mr. Chen took up Falun Gong in 1995, he suffered from multiple diseases including migraines, tuberculosis, enteritis, and rheumatism. He was also addicted to gambling.

Two months after he learned Falun Gong, not only did his ailments disappear, but he also quit gambling. His family, which was about to fall apart, became harmonious again.

After the persecution started, Mr. Chen was targeted several times for upholding his faith. He was arrested at work on September 10, 2003, carried into a police car, and taken to the local police station. When the police were ransacking his home, his elderly mother was so terrified that she fainted. Not finding any Falun Gong materials at his home, the police released him at 10 p.m. that night, after extorting 3,000 yuan from his workplace.

Mr. Chen was arrested again at a gas station on July 30, 2006, after being deceived by his work supervisors into going there. Four police officers then took him to the Tangxunhu Brainwashing Center in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province. He developed high blood pressure there and was then released. Because he refused to renounce Falun Gong, the local 610 Office, an extralegal agency created to persecute Falun Gong, ordered the tax bureau to remove him from his managerial position.

Mr. Chen talked to people about Falun Gong while getting a haircut in September 2008. Another client in the barbershop reported him, resulting in his arrest. He was released in the afternoon.

For distributing Falun Gong informational materials with his wife, Ms. Li Sheng, on March 30, 2014, Mr. Chen was arrested one more time and sentenced to a three-year prison term by the Guangshui City Court on August 18, 2015. He was taken to the Fanjiatai Prison in Shayang County on June 27, 2016.

The Fanjiatai Prison is the main prison used to incarcerate Falun Gong practitioners in Hubei Province. As soon as the practitioners were taken there, they were forced to stand three feet away from the wall and bend their body so that their head was pressed against the wall. They weren’t allowed to talk to or have eye contact with each other. They were denied family visitation. Many practitioners developed speech disorders (such as stuttering) after long term detention and isolation without being allowed to talk to each other. Meanwhile, they were also subjected to constant beating, sleep deprivation and starvation. Some were forced to drink urine or tied up on tiger bench.

Torture illustration: tiger bench

By the time Mr. Chen was released on April 29, 2019, he had lost his job and pension. He did odd jobs to make a living.

Related reports:

Former Tax Bureau Employee Again Faces Trial for His Faith

No Verdict for Illegally Tried Tax Bureau Official in Guangshui City