China’s ailing Nobel laureate repeats plea

Ailing Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who is currently receiving cancer treatment in northern China under medical parole, has repeated his wish to be treated abroad and for his wife to live in freedom after his death, a group of Liu’s supporters said yesterday.A US and a German doctor visited Liu on Saturday at the First Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang, where he is being treated for advanced liver cancer.The doctors said yesterday they believe he can be moved overseas for treatment but it would have to happen soon.“Liu Xiaobo and his family have requested that the remainder of his care be provided in Germany or the United States,” Joseph M Herman of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Markus Büchler of the University of Heidelberg said in a joint statement.“While a degree of risk always exists in the movement of any patient, both physicians believe Mr Liu can be safely transported with appropriate medical evacuation care and support. However, the medical evacuation would have to take place as quickly as possible.”Meanwhile, the hospital said that “a Chinese expert said the transportation process for the patient is not safe”. Buechler and Herman said the treatment he was receiving was appropriate, the hospital added. Liu, 61, suffers from metastasised cancer in its final stage.He has a large build-up of abdominal fluid and is in a “critical condition”, the hospital said.The treatment he is currently receiving is mainly palliative, after doctors on Thursday announced they had stopped giving him cancer-fighting drugs so as not to overwhelm his liver.Liu’s supporters, however, chided the hospital for becoming the authorities’ “mouthpiece” and for “helping the government to rationalise the effective imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo”. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for subverting state power and remains under strict supervision at the hospital.“There is a reason why Liu Xiaobo chose leaving the country for treatment as his last wish,” the Freedom for Liu Xiaobo Action Group said.“In this country, his voice, his name has become taboo; his body has also been ravaged by this regime; only his free soul longs to break free from imprisonment in its last day.”Liu also wants to earn the freedom of his wife, Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest and is suffering from depression, the group said.Liu wants his wife to be able to live abroad after his death.“His demand is very clear, that he wants to save his wife,” Liu’s friend, Mo Zhixu, told DPA.Chinese authorities have rejected Liu and his wife’s requests to travel overseas for treatment, but in response to an international outcry have allowed the foreign doctors to visit him.Liu is the co-author of a document signed in 2008 by 300 intellectuals, calling for a free, democratic and constitutional Chinese state.He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia in 2010 for his work campaigning for human rights in China.Yesterday was the second anniversary of a major Chinese government crackdown that led to the detention of hundreds of rights lawyers.But while that has taken a lot of lawyers who previously could represent people seeking redress from the Communist Party system out of circulation, it is not preventing activists from communicating, and in particular seeking to lobby foreign governments to take a stance against rights abuses in China, activists and diplomats say.On July 9, 2015, the authorities launched what rights groups say was a co-ordinated attempt to quash China’s rights movement, in what is known as the “709” crackdown because of the date of the event.The core members of the movement were described by the official paper of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily, as “a major criminal gang that has seriously damaged social order”.Two years on, most of the detained have been sentenced and are in prison or under house arrest; many made public confessions and were sentenced in what their families say were either secret or scripted trials.They weren’t allowed independent representation and were defended by government-appointed lawyers.Other activists and lawyers were picked up in the months before and after that date.Beijing’s campaign did not spell the end of rights activism in China, according to Western diplomats, who say their embassies are meeting activists on an almost daily basis.They did, though, say that the campaign has pushed activism further outside the system, limiting avenues of redress within China’s courts, and leaving international pressure as a main focus for the activists.The government has made reforms to professionalise the legal system and improve the average person’s ability to settle disputes in court, but the party has rejected a separation of powers in China and few lawyers work to actively find and defend people who are alleging there have been abuses of government power, as rights lawyers do.“They burned the field but the roots remain and new shoots are constantly appearing,” one Western diplomat said, declining to be named.Feng Chongyi, an Australia-based expert on China’s rights activists at the University of Technology Sydney, said that President Xi Jinping had aimed to “eliminate” the rights lawyers and other forms of organised resistance with the crackdown.Feng was himself prevented from leaving China for a week in March and was subjected to daily interrogations during that time.Those detained did get financial and moral support from other lawyers, said Feng, who is an Australian permanent resident with a Chinese passport.China has rejected international criticism of the crackdown and defends its detention and persecution of rights lawyers saying that they are criminals who pose a threat to China’s national security and social order.