Three days after being forcibly detained by the Shanghai police, retired Shanghai University teacher Gu Guoping was released today (24th).
Gu Guoping, who suffers from stage IV prostate cancer and severe hypertension, had a blood pressure reading of over 200mmHg multiple times before his detention, which did not meet the detention conditions but he was still forcefully detained.
Gu Guoping revealed to a reporter from Epoch Times, “On March 21st, I was taken to Changning District Central Hospital by the police from Zhoujiaqiao Police Station of Changning District before being sent to prison for a pre-incarceration physical examination. At that time, my blood pressure was 226mmHg. The police asked the doctor to give me medication to reduce the blood pressure to 186mmHg. After a while, I asked the doctor to check my blood pressure again, and it reached 212mmHg (documented). However, the police used the non-compliant (medicated) 186mmHg blood pressure as the basis for detention, despite my late-stage prostate cancer and other severe conditions, which did not meet the detention criteria.”
He also disclosed that on the night of the 21st, he was carried into the detention center by five police officers, fell from a chair, injured his back, lay in the cell for three days, and still cannot get out of bed.
After being detained for three days following widespread media coverage and attention overseas, Gu Guoping was released on March 24th, but the police did not issue him a detention certificate.
Gu Guoping was sentenced to one year and six months in prison after he was falsely accused of ‘breaking someone else’s four ribs’ when he sought accountability from the relevant authorities for having four of his ribs broken by the head of the black security team in a black jail in 2019. In response, he went to Beijing to uphold his rights.
On the morning of March 19th, he and petitioners Wang Huifang and Meng Qinbo went to Beijing to appeal. Around 5 p.m., after coming out of the Ministry of Public Security, they took bus line 14. At Liuli Factory Station, several police officers and security guards boarded the bus to check their identities, and later they were escorted out and sent back to Shanghai at Jiujingzhuang.
Upon returning to Shanghai, Gu Guoping was taken to Zhoujiaqiao Police Station of Changning District, where his blood pressure was as high as 218mmHg, but Changning District Public Security Bureau still approved his criminal detention. Before being incarcerated, the police once again requested a doctor to use antihypertensive drugs to lower Gu Guoping’s blood pressure to the detention standard.
Gu Guoping said, “The Shanghai Public Security Bureau has crossed the legal bottom line, distorted legal concepts, and illegally locked me up in the detention center.”
Therefore, he immediately reported the Shanghai Public Security Bureau to the Discipline Inspection Commission for violating legal provisions and forcibly detaining him.
Wang Huifang and Meng Qinbo, who were also arrested on bus line 14 in Beijing on March 19th, are still detained in custody. Gu Guoping also called on the media and netizens to continue to pay attention to them.