Chinese authorities have rejected a request for medical parole for a dissident who has championed AIDS victims and was imprisoned for sedition after being accused of plotting to disturb the Olympic Games, his wife said yesterday.
Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕) appealed last week to Beijing prison authorities, saying a medical consent form for her husband, Hu Jia (胡佳), when he entered a prison hospital last month showed a possible diagnosis of liver cancer. The appeal brought immediate support from some human rights groups and a petition in Chinese backing the medical parole has been circulating online.
However, a prison hospital director called Hu’s mother yesterday morning and said the request for parole had been rejected, and that Hu has been moved from the hospital back to prison, Zeng said.
The prison director told Hu’s mother that Hu had a “blood tumor” on his liver and his health didn’t meet the conditions of medical parole.
Zeng said she wants a written response and is still asking for medical parole.
Hu is serving a three-and-a-half-year jail term for sedition that is set to end next year in June. The charge stems from police accusations that he had planned to work with foreigners to disturb the Olympic Games.
The 36-year-old Hu has had liver problems in the past, including cirrhosis. Zeng’s letter to Beijing prison authorities said Hu’s mother saw a possible diagnosis of liver cancer — the words “liver cancer” with a question mark next to them — on a consent form for medical tests on Hu late last month.
“Tests showed an unidentified object about 3cm long on Hu Jia’s liver,” the letter said. The letter dated Wednesday asked that Hu be sent home for better care.
There was no immediate comment yesterday afternoon from the Beijing Prison Administration.
A request for Hu’s medical parole last year was rejected as well.
Initially an advocate for the rights of HIV/AIDS patients, Hu expanded his efforts. From his apartment, where he was often under house arrest, Hu used the Internet and telephone to chronicle the harassment and arrests of other dissidents.
“I have cirrhosis because I’ve been fighting against police in the past five years,” Hu said in an interview in early 2008. “The Chinese believe anger harms your liver. There have been too many fights, too much bleeding.”
In late 2008, Hu won the European Parliament’s top human rights prize.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS