Liu Xiaobo, sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for ‘subversion’ after calling for liberal reforms, is battling liver cancer
The health of China’s lone Nobel laureate, the dissident Liu Xiaobo, has dramatically deteriorated, according to the hospital treating him for liver cancer in Shenyang, China.
Doctors at China Medical University No. 1 Hospital released a statement Thursday, saying that they suspect Liu has a blood clot in one of his calf muscles and that his liver functioning “has deteriorated.”
Liu, 61, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for co-writing and distributing Charter 08, a petition that called for liberal reforms in mainland China. Accused of “inciting subversion of state power, ” the scholar of Chinese literature and philosophy was placed in a remote prison in northeast China, while his wife, the poet Liu Xia, was put under house arrest in Beijing, despite never being charged with a crime.
Earlier Thursday, Chinese authorities invited doctors from Germany and the United States to visit Shenyang and help treat Liu. Some, including the rights group Amnesty International, view the concession as an attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to sideline the issue ahead of the weekend’s G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where President Xi Jinping hopes to project global leadership on issues like climate change and free trade.
Although China released Liu from prison to seek medical care in June, authorities have denied him permission to search for better treatment elsewhere, insisting that he is being tended to by the nation’s pre-eminent liver cancer specialists.
