(Minghui.org) A 62-year-old resident of Bayan County, Heilongjiang Province was ordered to serve three years for not renouncing his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Mr. Gao Fuzhi was denied medical parole despite having developed serious medical conditions after being tortured at a detention center prior to his prison transfer.

Below is Mr. Gao's account of the persecution he has suffered:

During the 19th Congress of the Communist Party, the police harassed me in October 2017 with the excuse of “maintaining stability.” The officers took pictures of my home and searched my place for Falun Gong related materials.

My wife was terrified by them and she had a heart attack and fainted. The police then left, not wanting to bear responsibility for her condition.

The police came back a few days later to harass me again. I told them that Falun Gong is legitimate in China and gave the officers a flyer about how they have violated the law by harassing me.

Zhao Quan, the head of the local police station, said to me, “I will have to gather some evidence to send you to prison.”

Zhao and nine other officers scaled my fence and broke into my home on the evening of November 9, 2017. They arrested me and took me to the police station for interrogation. I was sent to Bayan County Detention Center at midnight.

Because I refused to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong, the guards ordered some detainees to torture me.

Four detainees held me and poured cold water onto my head, basin after basin. I lost all sensation and fell into a delirious state.

They didn't allow me to have any covers or wear warm clothes while asleep. It was so cold that I couldn't fall asleep at all.

On the next day, a detainee with a strong build punched me in the belly and slapped me in the face. He said to me, “Most people couldn't take three punches from me.”

He took the louse from his body and put it into my clothes, and wiped the water he used to wash his private parts onto my face. He even tried to force me to lick his private part and I firmly refused.

In addition to the physical torture, they also tried to torment me mentally by lying to me that my wife had just passed away or my house caught fire.

After months of intensive torture, my health declined severely. I was sent to the hospital on April 6, 2018 for resuscitation and was found to have many problems, including inflammation in my pancreas and gallbladder, as well as gallstones and cerebro-vascular disease.

The guards only allowed me to stay in the hospital for a few days before taking me back into custody. My body weight quickly dropped from around 260 lbs to 171 lbs.

I once asked a detainee who tortured me whether he was afraid of bearing responsibility for it. He replied that he was just following orders, and he didn't have to bear any responsibility should anything happen.

After nearly 10 months of detention, I was tried in the Yilan County Court on July 19. On November 5, 2018, I was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 15,000 yuan.

I was sent to Shuangyashan Prison on November 28, 2018 and then transferred to Hulan Prison on January 22, 2019.

Prior to this imprisonment, I have also been arrested four other times and served one year in a forced labor camp between 2005 and 2006 for demanding the release of several detained fellow practitioners.

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