CHINA REJECTS CRITICISM ON TREATMENT OF NOBEL LAUREATE

BEIJING: China on Tuesday rejected criticism over its treatment of cancer-stricken Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo after the US urged it to give the paroled activist freedom to move and choose his own doctors.

With three years left to serve in his 11-year sentence, the 61-yearold democracy campaigner was granted medical parole days after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer on May 23.

“We call on the Chinese authorities to not only release Mr Liu but also to allow his wife Ms Liu Xia out of house arrest,” US embassy spokeswoman Mary Beth Polley said. Liu Xia, a poet, has been under house arrest since 2010, when her husband won the Nobel prize. She suffered a heart attack in 2014, when she was also diagnosed with depression, a rights group said.

But China’s foreign ministry hit back, saying “no country has the right to interfere and make irresponsible remarks on Chinese internal affairs”.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING RANK ‘IRRESPONSIBLE’

China has pre-emptively hit back at the US for speaking “irresponsibly” ahead of an expected Trump administration move to name it among the world’s worst human trafficking offenders.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Tuesday China strongly opposes the US using its domestic laws to attack another country’s record, and maintained the results of China’s anti-human trafficking efforts are “obvious for everyone to see.”

The US State Department was to unveil on Tuesday a 2017 human trafficking report that downgrades China to the lowest “Tier 3” category, alongside North Korea, Zimbabwe and Syria. Tier 3 countries can be penalized with sanctions or barred from participating in US cultural exchange programmes.