(Minghui.org) As Dr. Hu Jinzhao walked out of the prison on April 20, 2025, after completing a four-year prison term for his faith in Falun Gong, he was greeted by six people from his local street committee and police station. They ordered him to sign various statements. When he refused to do so, they forced his family to sign on his behalf. They also escorted him back home to verify his address, in preparation for continued surveillance.
Dr. Hu, a 57-year-old former attending physician at the Yunnan Province Psychiatric Hospital in Kunming City, has been repeatedly targeted since 1999, after the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution of Falun Gong. Prior to his latest persecution episode, he was once tortured at a detention center for a month, a forced labor camp for three years and 40 days, a brainwashing center for one week, and a prison for three years. As a result of the persecution, his employer removed him from his job as a doctor in April 2002 and prevented him from working elsewhere. Unable to cope, his wife divorced him in March 2004.
While Minghui.org has reported on Dr. Hu’s persecution, he recently recounted new details about his latest arrest and prison abuse.
Dr. Hu said that he was actually arrested at work close to 1 p.m. on April 19, 2021, not at home on April 21 as previously reported. His manager asked to him to tidy up the storage room that day. Just a few minutes later, a hospital security officer led a group of plainclothes officers to barge into the storage room. They restrained him, and one of them flashed his ID without allowing Dr. Hu to read it. They searched him before driving him to his home. He learned later that one of the officers was Shi Ruilin from the Panlong District Domestic Security Office, while the rest were from the Xiaoba Police Station.
After opening Dr. Hu’s door using the key confiscated from him, two officers pressed down hard on his shoulder sockets, causing him great pain. The rest of the officers searched everywhere and seized dozens of Falun Gong books, several hundred yuan in banknotes printed with Falun Gong messages, some DVDs, his cell phone, computer, and a video recorder. They also snatched the six hundred yuan in cash that he had on him.
Dr. Hu was interrogated at the Xiaoba Police Station and restrained in a metal chair for the entire night.
The next morning, the police demanded to collect Dr. Hu’s fingerprints, palm prints, height, weight, and other biometric information. He refused to comply, and four of them, including Yin Tao, pinched and squeezed the skin and flesh on his sensitive areas. They also slapped him in the face and pinched his acupoints—wherever it hurt the most. At the same time, they pried open his fists.
At around noon, the police took Dr. Hu to the ophthalmology department of Panlong District People’s Hospital to collect his iris information. Because he was uncooperative, they held him down, kneeling in front of a slit lamp (an instrument used for eye exams), with their knees on either side of his calves. He felt excruciating pain but managed to stop them from examining his eyes.
The police took Dr. Hu back to the police station and kept him restrained in the same metal chair. At around 10 p.m that day (April 20, 2021), the police drove him to the Xinhua Hospital for a physical exam. He again resisted and was brutalized. A woman offered to give him some sedative before doing an electrocardiogram, and he explained why he, also a physician, was being persecuted. She ended up not doing the electrocardiogram.
Dr. Hu was returned to the police station at around 2 a.m. on April 21, 2021, and restrained again in the metal chair.
After day broke, the police drove Dr. Hu to the Panlong District Second Detention Center. He was denied admission because the exam results produced by the Xinhua Hospital showed several abnormal items, including the CPK level (Creatine Phosphokinase or Creatine Kinase), which was nearly ten times the normal range (an elevated level indicates muscle injury or disease).
The police put Dr. Hu in the Xinhua Hospital, where he stayed for nearly two months. His family was never notified of his arrest and they reported him missing. They also checked with all local police stations. Only after talking to the Xiaoba Police Station did they learn of his arrest and hospitalization. The police however did not allow them to visit him in the hospital.
Dr. Hu was admitted to the Panlong District Second Detention Center after being discharged from the hospital on June 30, 2021. A judge from the Xishan District Court tried him at the detention center without notifying his family, and later sentenced him to a four-year prison term. His appeal was subsequently rejected.
Dr. Hu was admitted to the Yunnan Province Prison on April 8, 2022, and held in a quarantine area. Two weeks later, he was put in the intensive training division. The guards labeled “Falun Gong” as a taboo. Those who mentioned it were given two warnings. A third “offense” would result in pepper-spraying in the eyes.
Dr. Hu said he was pepper-sprayed 20-30 times during his prison term.
Starting in May 2022, Dr. Hu was forced to stand for 15-16 hours every day, often outside under the scorching sun. His insteps, calves, and even genitals became swollen. Walking felt like being pricked by needles to him.
The standing torture did not stop until September 2022, when the intensive training division had a new director.
Dr. Hu also recalled that there was a monthly meeting, during which those practitioners who had been forced to renounce Falun Gong were further criticized by others. He was never made to attend the meetings, however, because they knew he would call out “Falun Dafa is good.”
The pandemic hit the prison in December 2021. Only then did the guards lessen the persecution of Dr. Hu and other practitioners a bit to focus on pandemic control. After the pandemic eased in a few months, the guards again intensified the persecution. There was a new campaign targeting the practitioners every quarter. All existing and newly-admitted inmates were ordered to raise their right fists to pledge that they admitted their guilt and accepted the punishment and discipline in the prison.
Dr. Hu said he was tortured for refusing to do the pledge.
On his birthday in July 2023, the prison notified Dr. Hu that someone was there to visit him. His mother had gone to the prison many times but was never allowed to see him because he held firm to his faith. He wondered who the visitor was.
It turned out it was his two hospital colleagues, one from the workers’ union and another from the finance department. They were there to notify him that the hospital had terminated him after making him work as a janitor for over two decades.
From August to September 2023, Dr. Hu was placed in a solitary confinement cell, with six inmates taking turns monitoring him. One or two were the primary monitors, and the others rotated periodically. They talked among themselves but did not allow him to utter a word.
Dr. Hu noted that the cell walls and the restroom walls were all covered with papers printed with words slandering Falun Gong and its founder. He removed them. The monitors then put more up high on the ceiling. They also read books defaming Falun Gong in front of him. They picked paragraphs from Falun Gong books and misinterpreted the meanings out of context.
A few months later, the monitors began playing videos smearing Falun Gong. Dr. Hu remained firm to his faith despite the endless attempts to make him give up his faith.
He also reported that while in solitary confinement, he started to experience rapid heartbeat and slow reaction after eating meals or drinking water. He also felt extremely drowsy and had symptoms of sensory processing disorder (a neurological condition where the brain struggles to receive, organize, and respond to information from the senses). It was almost like his internal GPS system was malfunctioning. When he reached out for an object, he often missed it.
Dr. Hu noted that if he vomited out what he ate or drank quickly, his symptoms were significantly reduced. But the guards soon stopped him from doing so. They instructed the inmates to not give him too much water to drink. They had the inmates report to them and send him to the in-house clinic as soon as he started vomiting.
Dr. Hu suspected that the food and water given to him contained toxic drugs. He did not have the above symptoms in the last three months of his prison term, when he was given seemingly normal food and water.
The guards began to force Dr. Hu to do hard labor in 2024, along with the other inmates. But they instructed an inmate to read a book slandering Falun Gong in the workshop. Dr. Hu ripped the book and was pepper-sprayed by guard Ma. He washed his face but still could not open his eyes after 30 minutes. His face still felt like it was burning the next morning.
While the guards no longer had inmates read books slandering Falun Gong, Dr. Hu said he was always on edge, as the guards used various kinds of abuse to make him suffer.
In January 2025, Dr. Hu suddenly felt that his right ear was ringing, accompanied by a burning pain. The guards nontheless forced him to watch the evening news along with the other inmates. After he was allowed to return to his cell, he washed his ear but the pain worsened. That night, he heard a running sound in his ear, and soon fluid drained out of his ear canal. He plugged the ear with tissue paper, and the pale yellow fluid soaked several sheets of the paper.
Three days later, the inmates assigned to monitor him reported his situation to the guards. They took him to the prison clinic, where the doctor suspected eardrum perforation and recommended taking him to an outside hospital.
The guards waited one day before taking Dr. Hu to the Yan’an Hospital. The exam results indicated two or three blood blisters on his right eardrum, and congestion and blood crusts in the right ear canal. No perforation was observed, but there were two healed scars on his left eardrum. Based on the scars, the outside hospital doctor said that Dr. Hu had otitis media. He told her that the scars were from him being slapped in the face by guard Yang while he was held in a labor camp between 2004 and 2007. The doctor did not believe him and insisted that the scars did not result from injuries.
Dr. Hu reported that his hearing in the right ear had deteriorated significantly. After he was released on April 20, 2025, he still faced surveillance by the local street committee and the police.
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