VOA reporter finds tight security tight at the Number One Teaching Hospital of the China Medical Sciences University where Liu is under treatment
The United States is arranging for an American doctor to visit China and examine ailing Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who won the Noble Peace Prize in 2010, when he was imprisoned for “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
“The U. S. Department of State is facilitating travel for an American medical expert to come to China, ” said Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the U. S. State Department’s East Asia bureau. “We have asked that China grant these doctors unhindered access to Liu.”
Liu, 61, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as Charter 08 that called for democratic reforms in China. He was granted medical parole in late June to a hospital in China’s northeastern city of Shenyang to be treated for late-stage liver cancer.
Deteriorating condition
Liu is under treatment at the Number One Teaching Hospital of the China Medical Sciences University, where there is a unit on the 23rd floor usually reserved for high-level officials.
On Friday evening, the hospital said that Liu’s appetite was “quite poor” and that abdominal fluid that had built up had been drained.
A source at Germany’s foreign ministry told Reuters that a German cancer specialist is at the hospital that is treating Liu.
“We hear that his condition has deteriorated rapidly. We are very concerned about that, ” the German source said.
The Chinese medical team treating Liu decided to stop use of an inhibitor drug for advanced liver cancer because of Liu’s rapidly worsening liver functions, according to a statement Friday on the hospital’s website.
The hospital has invited doctors from the United States and Germany to help with Liu’s treatment, the Shenyang city justice department said Wednesday.
Watch: VOA Reporter Finds High Security at Hospital Where Liu Is Being Treated
New security measures
Security at the hospital has increased over the past few days.
