Ailing Dissident’s Case Fits a Pattern in Chinese Prisons, Critics Say
Accusations that Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate who has late-stage liver cancer, has not received proper treatment have brought new
scrutiny to what human rights advocates say is a pattern in Chinese prisons: the denial of health care to dissidents to intimidate and punish them.
A 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, citing interviews with former detainees, found
that medical care provided by detention centers was "rudimentary at best." The report said that officials barred seriously ill inmates from seeking care outside detention centers, contrary to international standards.
In 2014, Cao Shunli, an activist who was detained in Beijing after leading a human rights campaign, died after the
authorities denied her requests for medical parole to treat tuberculosis, liver disease and other ailments.
Frances Eve said that There is a real fear amongst prisoners of conscience and their families
that authorities aren’t afraid to let them die from lack of adequate medical care,
Mr. Liu, 61, who is serving an 11-year sentence for "inciting subversion of state power," is being treated for advanced
liver cancer at a hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang, the authorities announced last month.
Tang Jingling, a human rights lawyer in southern China who was sentenced last year to five years in prison for
subversion of state power, fell ill last month with stabbing pains in his heart, according to his relatives.
This kind of an environment causes serious harm to people’s physical
and mental health." In China, law enforcement officers, not doctors, usually make decisions about medical parole; as a result, many requests for parole are denied, advocates say.