(Minghui.org) A grandfather in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, was forced to take hypertension medication while serving a 7.5-year term because he practices Falun Gong. He became extremely weak afterwards and refused to have any more pills. He is currently held at a police hospital and is denied parole.
Mr. Chen Shigui’s granddaughter, a boarding school student, was expelled from school on September 18, 2025, after she told her roommates about her grandfather’s ordeal.
Mr. Chen was arrested on July 10, 2019 and was sentenced to seven and a half years on December 28, 2020. After his appeal was rejected in May 2021, he was sent to the Jiazhou Prison. He called his family once a month but he did not call them in early August 2025.
A call finally came from Mr. Chen on August 24, 2025 and he told his loved ones what happened to him. He said the prison doctor measured his systolic blood pressure at 180 mmHg (when a normal range is 120 or lower) and urged him to take hypertension medication or he’d risk having brain bleed. He believed the doctor and started taking pills. The medication however made him feel extremely weak. His head buzzed and felt heavy. He also had intermittent memory loss and couldn’t recall the names of people he knew.
Mr. Chen said he was afraid he might not survive his prison term.
Bai Yang, head of the prison administration section, called Mr. Chen’s family the next day to say that he instructed the prison doctor to take Mr. Chen’s blood pressure multiple times after listening to recordings of his latest call with his family. Bai said that Mr. Chen’s blood pressure remained persistently high but he stopped taking pills. They planned to send him to the Sichuan Provincial Judicial Police General Hospital the following morning.
Mr. Chen’s family was notified the next day to visit him at the police hospital on August 28. During the visit, he offered more details of his ordeal and expressed doubt about the accuracy of the blood pressure meter used in the prison. He said that the meter always showed abnormal readings. After he took the pills for one or two weeks, he heard loud sounds in his head and it was unbearable. His head felt very heavy and his neck felt so stiff that he couldn’t turn his head. He felt all his organs were failing and he refused to take any more pills. The prison doctor went into a rage and instructed the guards to make him swallow the pills. He firmly refused.
Mr. Chen also said that most of his teeth had become rotten and loose, with only two usable, making it extremely difficult to chew food. The prison food was very poor and lacked nutrition. Despite this, he was still forced to work without pay and was only given two days of rest.
Mr. Chen asked his family to consult a lawyer and get him out of the prison. His daughter and granddaughter went to the prison on August 29 to request he be released on medical parole. Bai said that Mr. Chen did not sign all four statements required of Falun Gong practitioners to renounce and denounce their faith. Additionally, the hospital had not issued a critical condition notice; hence Mr. Chen was not eligible for parole.
Mr. Chen’s granddaughter, Ms. Hou Tianran, is a boarding student at Chengdu Railway Health School (a vocational high school). When her roommates asked why she appeared so sad, she told them about her grandfather’s imprisonment. She also recounted how he was arrested in front of her years ago, when she was only ten years old.
One of the roommates repeated Ms. Hou’s story to their homeroom teacher, Chen Zhujiao (no relation to Mr. Chen). She summoned Ms. Hou to her office and pretended to be interested in learning more about Falun Gong. She asked if Ms. Hou had any Falun Gong books and the teen sent her an electronic version of Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Gong, along with some pictures of her grandfather in prison.
Two days later, Feng Boyang, vice dean of students, summoned Ms. Hou to his office, and ordered her to “voluntarily drop out of school.” He then instructed Chen and three other teachers to escort her back home on September 18, 2025.
Ms. Hou’s mother mailed a letter to the school and told them it was illegal to expel her daughter for her father’s faith, which has never been criminalized in China. The school leaders talked to the mother and had teacher Chen notify Ms. Hou that she must report to the Sandaoyan Police Station to have her case registered before she was allowed to return to school.
Ms. Hou’s mother did not take her to the police station and instead brought her to the school entrance. Teacher Chen came out and took them to the police station against their will. Instructor Huang Deshou insisted that Ms. Hou “drop out of school.” Deputy chief Pan Jicheng accused the mother and daughter of not showing gratitude to the Chinese Communist Party that: “Gave them everything.”
Teacher Chen shamed Ms. Hou’s mother for being jobless and the latter responded that she was a full-time caregiver of her own mother, who required dialysis three times a week.
Pan ordered Ms. Hou’s mother to take her home to wait for a notice regarding whether and when she’d be allowed to return to school. She learned later that teacher Chen also took her four roommates to the police station to be deposed.
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