Foreign doctors deem ill Chinese Nobel laureate OK to travel
Two foreign specialists who visited Liu Xiaobo said Sunday that the cancerstricken Nobel Peace Prize laureate can safely travel abroad for treatment, apparently contradicting statements by Chinese experts who say a medical evacuation would be unsafe for China’s best-known political prisoner. The American and German doctors, who saw Liu on Saturday, issued a joint statement saying that their home institutions — the University of Heidelberg and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas — have agreed to accept Liu, but that any evacuation would have to take place “as quickly as possible.” Liu was diagnosed in May with latestage liver cancer while serving an 11-year sentence for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms that would end China’s one-party rule. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, the year after he was convicted and jailed by a Chinese court. The differing opinions about the feasibility of Liu travelling could further complicate the tug of war over the 61-year-old activist. For weeks, family and supporters have asked for Liu to be fully released and allowed to receive treatment abroad, arguing that authorities are keeping him in China only out of political considerations. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has maintained that Liu is receiving the best treatment possible at the First Hospital of China Medical University in the northern city of Shenyang. Chinese state media have labeled Liu a convicted criminal, and the government has warned other countries to stay out of China’s internal affairs. Following international criticism, China allowed the two foreign experts, Dr. Markus W. Buchler of Heidelberg University and Dr. Joseph Herman of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, to visit Liu. Buchler and Herman said in their statement Sunday that they “acknowledged” the quality of care Liu has received in Shenyang. But they said that Liu expressed a desire to leave China, and that they judged that he “can be safely transported with appropriate medical evacuation care and support.”