Beijing’s Nobel Shame

Western doctors contradict China on Nobel laureate's cancer
BBC News

Supporters have appealed to China to allow Mr Liu to travel abroad for treatment

Two Western doctors have contradicted Chinese medical experts over the fate of a dying Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned pro-democracy advocate, was moved to hospital while serving an 11-year jail term, because of his advanced terminal liver cancer.
His doctors in China say he is too ill to travel abroad for treatment, and must remain in China.
But medics from the US and Germany who examined Mr Liu disagree and say he could go abroad for palliative care.
Joseph Herman from the University of Texas' cancer centre and Markus Büchler of the University of Heidelberg surgery department, released a joint statement saying a medical evacuation would have to happen "as quickly as possible".

Friends of Liu Xiaobo and his wife say he is near death

"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," they said.
Liu Xiaobo and his family have both asked that he be allowed to leave.
Mr Liu was a key leader in the famous Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and has been a vocal advocate for full democracy in China since.
The state considers him a criminal dissident, and in 2009, sentenced him to 11 years in prison for subversive behaviour after he drafted a manifesto on democracy and human rights.
He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2010 for his "long and non-violent struggle".
"Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China," the Nobel Committee wrote.
He had more than three years remaining on his sentence when authorities moved him into a hospital.
Following his Nobel prize, Mr Liu's wife, a poet, was placed under house arrest, and has had her movements restricted ever since. 

She has never been charged with a crime.

The love that survived a Chinese labour camp

"I found all the beauty in the world in this one woman."
Their wedding banquet was in the labour camp's cafeteria, a scenario that would prove to be symbolic. 

Throughout their intense romance, the Chinese government was a relentless and interfering third wheel, the uninvited partner providing a constant backdrop to their interactions.
By all accounts, Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia were inseparable, except when they were forcibly separated.

Liu Xiaobo asks to leave China for treatment

Supporters call for democracy activist who has terminal liver cancer to receive his ‘last wish to experience freedom’

By Tom Phillips in Beijing 

Liu Xiaobo during a January 2008 interview at his Beijing home. 

China’s most famous political prisoner, the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, has told foreign doctors he wishes to leave China, a family friend has said, as supporters renewed their appeal for the dissident to be allowed a final taste of freedom.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Liu’s former lawyer and friend, Shang Baojun, said the terminally ill democracy activist was visited by medical specialists from the United States and Germany on Saturday.

“He again expressed a desire to go abroad for treatment, preferably in Germany, though the US would also be fine, and his family members said the same,” Shang told the Associated Press. 

“We sincerely hope this request will be approved.”
A statement from the hospital in north-east China where Liu, who has spent the last seven years in prison, is being treated said he was “suffering from advanced liver cancer that has metastasised to his entire body and is at the end stage”.
The statement, from Shenyang’s First Hospital of China Medical University, said Liu had been visited and evaluated by Dr Markus W Büchler, a specialist in pancreatic surgery from Germany’s Heidelberg University, and Dr Joseph Herman, an oncologist from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. 

The doctors had raised Liu’s desire to leave China but had been told by Chinese experts that “transferring the patient would not be safe”.

Liu Xiaobo during a visit by foreign doctors. 

Liu, who is 61, was given medical parole after he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May. However, China has refused to allow the dying activist to leave the country despite calls from governments including the US for him to be freed.
On Saturday Liu’s friends and supporters repeated their call for Beijing to grant the campaigner “his last wish” by allowing him to leave China.
In an open letter drafted by his friend, the activist Ai Xiaoming, supporters said it was “abundantly clear” that the Chinese hospital where Liu was being held had exhausted its treatment options. 

As a result he should be allowed to seek treatment abroad, the group argued.
“Even though Liu Xiaobo is still a prisoner of this country, even though he’s nearing his death, his heart is still beating and his soul longs for freedom. He has made the final choice for his life: leave this prison and experience freedom,” the group wrote.
Xi Jinping, who has overseen what observers call China’s most severe crackdown since 1989, is facing international censure over his government’s treatment of Liu, who was arrested in December 2008 for his involvement in a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08 and later jailed for 11 years. 

The manifesto called, among other things, for an end to one-party rule.
Jean-Philippe Béja, a French academic who has known Liu for 25 years, condemned China’s treatment of his friend in recent months as “terrible and illogical”.
Béja said the international community had failed to sufficiently “shame the Chinese leadership” over its treatment of a peaceful democracy activist who had spent almost a quarter of his life behind bars for defending his ideas.
“The guy is going to die … [perhaps] in the next month or two,” Béja said. 

“People should realise: what kind of a regime can do that to someone who just wrote articles? I think we should ponder over this situation.”

German, US doctors visit ill Chinese Nobel winner

AFP

A file picture released by the family of Liu Xiaobo taken on March 14, 2005 shows 2010 Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, left, and his brother Liu Xiaoxuan.

US and German doctors examined China's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo on Saturday and concluded he was in a serious condition with late-stage liver cancer, the hospital treating him said.
The foreign doctors visited Liu, 61, at the hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang following international pressure for China to let him go abroad or allow him to choose his own treatment.
Friends of Liu's fear he is near death since he was transferred from prison to the Shenyang hospital after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer more than a month ago.
The First Hospital of China Medical University said Liu was visited by American oncology expert Joseph Herman from the MD Anderson Cancer Center and German doctor Marcus Buchler from Heidelberg University.
The doctors, who were invited by the hospital at Liu's family's request, found that Liu had excess abdominal fluid and was in serious condition, the hospital said on its website.
They suggested that Liu undergo an MRI to evaluate his liver's condition and decide if he should undergo radiotherapy or another type of intervention.
If his liver function improves, they could consider immunotherapy, but for now Liu will continue supportive therapy to alleviate the pain and "elevate his quality of life," the hospital said.
"The American and German specialists have fully endorsed the treatment programme and measures by the group of national experts," it said.
Patrick Poon, a China researcher from Amnesty International, welcomed the decision to allow international experts access to Liu.
But Poon said the decision "shows that China is determined not to fulfil Liu Xiaobo's wish to receive medical care abroad".
Furthermore, the experts are unlikely to be able to speak about Liu's condition, Poon said.
"Reasons like privacy could be cited as the excuse of not disclosing any details."
Beijing has come under fire from human rights groups over its treatment of the activist and for waiting until he became so ill to take him out of prison, but authorities insist he has been afforded top medical care from renowned doctors.
The doctors' visit comes as Xi Jinping is in Hamburg, Germany, for a G20 summit ending Saturday.
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for "subversion" after calling for democratic reform. 

At the Nobel ceremony in Oslo in 2010, he was represented by an empty chair.
A friend of Liu's, who asked to remain anonymous due to the case's sensitivity, told AFP that both his younger and older brothers are set to visit him in hospital for the first time this weekend.
But "Liu's friends are still not able to meet him," Poon said, which "speaks a lot about the restrictions Liu and his family face."