Jailed Activist's Health Failing

By Radio Free Asia | FREE Press for CLOSED Societies
January 17. 2011

Chinese authorities refuse medical parole for a rights activist and winner of the Sakharov Prize.

Jailed Chinese AIDS activist and rights campaigner Hu Jia's health is deteriorating badly, according to his wife Zeng Jinyan, who visited him in a Beijing prison on Friday.

"When we were talking, he suddenly had a seizure, with his face and lips turning pale and his head sweating," Zeng wrote on the microblogging site Twitter.

"He said his left abdomen was hurting. Then he could no long sit upright, so we let him lie down, and we saw that his shirt was wet from perspiration. The guards sent him to the prison hospital, and my visit had to end early," Zeng wrote.

"Hu Jia has always been sick like this. Seizures similar to the one on Friday actually happened several times before, but he hadn't told us," Zeng said in an interview on Monday.

"His medical treatment in prison has never been adequate," Zeng added.

Hu suffers from hepatitis and cholelithiasis, but authorities have denied him medical parole five times in the past without explanation, according to Zeng.

Zeng applied anew on Sunday for Hu's release on medical grounds.

"I filed on Hu Jia's behalf for medical parole again," she said. "Even one day less in jail is a plus for the health of my husband."

Phone calls to Beijing City Prison, where Hu is serving his jail term, went unanswered on Monday.

Wrote critical articles online

Hu's Beijing-based lawyer Mo Shaoping said, "The prison really should give either oral or written explanation for why they have denied Hu Jia's appeal for parole."

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