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.”

Liu Xiaobo's unbearable fate is stark symbol of where China is heading

Treatment of dying Nobel peace prize winner is emblematic of China’s iron rule. Tania Branigan on the remarkable man she nearly met – the day he was arrested.
By Tania Branigan

There was no sign of Liu Xiaobo in the Beijing coffee shop – a confusion over the place or time we had arranged to meet, I assumed.
But he wasn’t answering his mobile phone and a call to his home brought worrying news: 10 police had arrived late the night before and taken him away.
Even then, the writer’s disappearance did not seem overly concerning.
Chinese dissidents and activists were used to pressure from the authorities and brief detentions for questioning, or worse.
But Liu enjoyed a relative degree of tolerance because of his high profile, though he’d been jailed over 1989’s Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests when he helped broker a peaceful exit from the square for the remaining demonstrators amid the bloody crackdown – and again in the 90s.
This time was different.
He never returned to the flat he shared with his wife, and now he never will.
There were months of detention, then a charge of inciting subversion of state power, finally a sentence: 11 years, the longest known term since the crime had been introduced.
Today brought the last, unbearable shock.
The 61-year-old is in the late stages of terminal liver cancer, diagnosed only weeks ago – in itself a reflection of medical care in Chinese prisons.
His friends are stunned and grieving.
The news has sickened many more who, like me, never had the chance to meet him.


US joins growing calls for China to allow Liu Xiaobo cancer treatment abroad

His release to a hospital, apparently on medical parole, saves China the embarrassment of a Nobel peace prize winner dying behind bars.
But it is almost certain that access to him will remain tightly restricted.
It is not even guaranteed that his wife will have the chance to say goodbye.
Liu Xia has been under house arrest since a few months after her husband’s detention, under the most punitive conditions. 
The life of this once serene and resilient woman has been wrecked.
Friends say she has depression and heart problems.
Beijing’s position is clear: China has no dissidents and Liu Xiaobo is a criminal.
His offence was to co-author and gather signatures for a landmark call for reforms, though he did not initiate it and was seized before it was released.
Though Charter 08 mostly called for the Communist party to uphold commitments made in its own constitution it was a coherent and forthright challenge to the party’s rule, calling for peaceful democratic reform.
There was no indication it had real mass appeal, still less a political impact.
But it was a sign of the times.
Liu believed the space for civil society was developing.
By 2008, despite the tight political grip, China’s lawyers, intellectuals and grassroots campaigners had carved out a surprising amount of room for themselves.
In part through the internet, despite extensive censorship, but also through imaginative tactics and discussion, they found new ways to tackle injustices, question authorities and highlight abuses.
They grew bolder.

A woman wears a badge asking for the release of Liu Xiaobao outside the legislative council in Hong Kong, in 2010. 

Liu’s arrest was a sign of the times too.
The security apparatus seized its opportunity.
In China, people talk of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys – making an example of someone to warn others.
Since Liu’s detention, the crackdown on dissent, activism and civil society more generally has mounted month by month.
Beijing has expanded the security apparatus, introduced repressive new laws and tightened censorship. 
Rights lawyers, activists and others have been disbarred, detained and jailed.
Many have made detailed allegations of torture, which the government denies.
All of this has been accompanied by ideological tightening across academia, religion, even state media and officialdom itself: a sort of sterilisation of the environment.
The Nobel peace prize meant a great deal to Liu – who told his wife he dedicated it “to the martyrs of Tiananmen Square” – and to others like him.
But it also spurred Beijing to up the ante in two regards as it sought to stamp out criticism.
The first change was very personal: the marked deterioration in the conditions of Liu Xia, who had spoken out repeatedly about her husband, and the extension of pressure to others.
Her brother Liu Hui – who had supported her financially and carried her messages to her jailed husband – was jailed for 13 years for fraud.
She called it “simply persecution”.
The second was international.
Beijing has never appreciated overseas criticism of its human rights record, but after the peace prize it toughened its stance, determined that countries should pay a price for challenging it.
The punishment of Norway, because its Nobel committee had made the award, sent a message to the rest of the world: stay out of it. 
Increasingly, foreign governments have listened.

As they talk up trade and mute their human rights concerns they might consider Liu’s dedication to his ideals, whatever the cost and circumstances.
When the 1989 protests broke out, he was in the US: he decided to return to China though fully aware of the risks.
In his final statement to the court which jailed him, he told the police, prosecutors and judges that they were not his enemies: “I have no hatred.”
There are reports he was offered the chance of exile in exchange for a confession after the Nobel prize, but his lawyer said he had always been clear he would accept only unconditional release.
So he is, in many ways, remarkable.
But he is also representative.
He is not the only dissident to be released shortly before dying from a condition that might well have been treatable with decent medical care in prison and earlier parole. 
Since security agents seized him that night in December 2008, many more have followed him into detention and jail.
Many more relatives have been targeted for highlighting what has happened to their loved ones.
“Where is China headed in the 21st century?” asked Charter 08.
“Will it continue with ‘modernisation’ under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilised nations, and build a democratic system? There can be no avoiding these questions.”
Beijing has given its answer, and his name is Liu Xiaobo.

State Terrorism

Political murder: anger after terminally ill Chinese Nobel laureate released from prison
By Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

An undated handout image of Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel peace prize winner. 

China’s dissident community has expressed anger, shock and sadness that the country’s best-known political prisoner – the democracy activist and Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo – has been transferred to hospital after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.
Liu, 61, had been serving an 11-year prison sentence for inciting subversion of state power. 

His lawyer, Mo Shaoping, who has been in contact with Liu’s family, said he was now in the late stages of disease. 

Another of Liu’s lawyers, Shang Baojun, said he had been diagnosed on 23 May.

Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo released from Chinese prison with late-stage cancer

“This type of late-stage cancer is very difficult to treat. It would have been easier if it was discovered sooner,” Shang said. 

“It’s extremely serious.”
News of Liu’s diagnosis was met with an outpouring of anger from activists in China and abroad.
“This is simply a political murder, this is how the Communist party deals with its enemies, a prisoner of conscience dying just outside a jail cell,” said Hu Jia, a fellow activist who has known Liu for more than a decade and previously collaborated with him. 

“I’ve been to prison in China. The medical care is terrible and I’m sure China’s leaders were hoping for this outcome.”
In a rare statement, the Norwegian Nobel committee, which awarded Liu the prize in 2010, said: “Liu Xiaobo has fought a relentless struggle in favour of democracy and human rights in China and has already paid a heavy price. Chinese authorities carry a heavy responsibility if Liu Xiaobo, because of his imprisonment, has been denied necessary medical treatment.”

Liu is being treated by a team of eight doctors at the First Hospital of China Medical University in the north-eastern city of Shenyang, according to the provincial prison bureau, which also confirmed his medical parole.
Friends and family worry he may not receive the best care. 

He has asked to return to his home of Beijing to undergo medical treatment, but the authorities refused permission to do so.
“It adds injury to insult that Liu Xiaobo, who should never have been put in prison in the first place, has been diagnosed with a grave illness,” said Patrick Poon, a China researcher at Amnesty International. 

“The Chinese authorities should immediately ensure that Liu Xiaobo receives adequate medical care, effective access to his family and that he and all others imprisoned solely for exercising their human rights are immediately and unconditionally released.”
Liu was arrested in 2008 after writing a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08, in which he called for an end to one-party rule and improvements in human rights. 

Following a year in detention and a two-hour trial, he was sentenced to 11 years in December 2009.
Little has been heard from him since, and he was represented by an empty chair during the 2010 the Nobel peace prize award ceremony. 

In his absence, Liu’s final statement to the court entitled “I have no enemies” was read in place of his speech.
“Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation’s progress toward freedom and democracy,” one section read. 

“That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation’s development and social change, to counter the regime’s hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.”
Zhang Xuezhong, a legal scholar and human rights activist, said Liu had been a symbol of hope for many years.
“It’s known that Liu Xiaobo and his family have made a tremendous sacrifice for the cause of freedom and democracy for China,” said Zhang. 

“This is unfortunate news for him and his family, and it’s a blow to China’s democracy movement, as so many people have placed hope in him, and rightfully so.”

Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The Chinese government’s culpability for wrongfully imprisoning Liu Xiaobo is deepened by the fact that they released him only when he became gravely ill.”
A foreign ministry spokesman was “not aware of the situation” when asked about Liu’s case at a daily press briefing.
A literary critic and scholar, Liu was previously jailed for two years in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests and subsequent massacre.
His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest since her husband won his Nobel prize and has reportedly suffered from depression and insomnia because of her isolation. 

She has not been formally charged with a crime despite spending the past seven years confined to her apartment.
Any meetings between the couple, usually one a month, are watched over by prison guards who interrupt any conversation they deem unsavoury. 

They are not allowed to touch.
More than 1,400 political dissidents are detained in China, according to a US congressional database, but the number is probably higher because information about topics deemed sensitive by the ruling Communist party is heavily censored.
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a wide-ranging crackdown on civil society, including the arrest of feminist activists, human rights lawyers and book publishers.
Liu’s 2010 Nobel prize infuriated the Chinese government and relations with Norway quickly deteriorated. 

Normal relations were only restored in December 2016, when the country said it “attaches high importance to China’s core interests and major concerns, will not support actions that undermine them, and will do its best to avoid any future damage to the bilateral relations”.