Hospital says Liu suffering organ failure
Rights groups query veracity of reports
BEIJING: The hospital treating China’s cancer-stricken Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo offered a grim update on his health yesterday, but human rights groups cautioned that the authorities may be manipulating the medical reports.
The 61-year-old democracy advocate’s liver function continued to deteriorate and he suffered from “shock and organ failure”, according to the First Hospital of China Medical University in the northeastern city of Shenyang.
The hospital’s website has been giving regular updates about Liu’s condition since he was admitted early last month after he was transferred from prison with late-stage liver cancer.
The Chinese government has rebuffed international appeals to let Liu seek treatment abroad, saying he is getting the best possible care from top domestic doctors.
The US repeated calls on Tuesday for Liu to be released and said it was ready to welcome him if he chose to be treated there.
US and German cancer experts visited Liu last weekend and determined he was strong enough to be medically evacuated, but the hospital has issued pessimistic medical updates since then.
Two doctors from the US and Germany who visited Liu on Saturday later said they considered it safe for him to be moved overseas for treatment, but such a move must happen as quickly as possible.
After the doctors’ Sunday statement, China released short videos of their visit, apparently taken without their knowledge, in which the German doctor appeared to praise the care Liu had received from the Chinese doctors.
On Monday, the German embassy in Beijing said in a statement the release of the videos went against Germany’s wishes and suggested: “Security organs are steering the process, not medical experts.”
Asked about Germany’s statement, the foreign ministry on Tuesday said it did not know anything about the issues raised, reiterating its position that countries should not interfere in China’s internal affairs.
“As the authorities are controlling all the information about Liu Xiaobo’s health condition, it’s difficult to verify if the information released on the hospital’s website is true or not,” Amnesty International’s China researcher Patrick Poon said.
“It’s also legitimate to question if the authorities are releasing the information about his worsening health as an attempt to delay and justify not allowing Liu Xiaobo to leave the country.”
Human Rights Watch’s Asia researcher Maya Wang said there has been little information coming from Liu’s family about his health, limiting the amount of independent updates.
“We simply don’t know to what extent these are professional medical reports and to what extent this is politically manipulated information,” Ms Wang said.
“We do not know how reliable these accounts are, or if they mean Liu Xiaobo cannot travel,” a friend of Liu’s family said, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.
No one answered the telephone at the hospital’s publicity department yesterday.
The leaked videos earlier this week were denounced as propaganda by rights groups.
But in an editorial, the state-run Global Times newspaper said the video aimed to show the Chinese doctors’ efforts to help him and said “Western forces are politicising Liu’s cancer treatment”.
The “confrontational tone” of those in the West voicing their opinions on Liu failed to focus on his illness, the newspaper said yesterday.
“China has already taken the feelings of relevant Western forces into consideration, and has no obligation to meet their unreasonable demands,” it said in an English-language editorial.
Liu was arrested in 2008 after co-writing Charter 08, a bold petition that called for the protection of basic human rights and reform of China’s one-party Communist system.
He was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “subversion”. At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in 2010, he was represented by an empty chair.