Jailed Chinese AIDS activist and rights campaigner Hu Jia’shealth is deteriorating badly, according to his wife Zeng Jinyan, who visitedhim in a Beijing prison on Friday.
“When we were talking, he suddenly had a seizure, with hisface and lips turning pale and his head sweating,” Zeng wrote on themicroblogging site Twitter.
“He said his left abdomen was hurting. Then he could nolong sit upright, so we let him lie down, and we saw that his shirt was wetfrom perspiration. The guards sent him to the prison hospital, and my visit hadto end early,” Zeng wrote.
“Hu Jia has always been sick like this. Seizures similar tothe one on Friday actually happened several times before, but he hadn’t toldus,” 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 authoritieshave denied him medical parole five times in the past without explanation,according to Zeng.
Zeng applied anew on Sunday for Hu’s release on medicalgrounds.
“I filed on Hu Jia’s behalf for medical parole again,” shesaid. “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 hisjail term, went unanswered on Monday.
Wrote criticalarticles online
Hu’s Beijing-based lawyer Mo Shaoping said, “The prisonreally should give either oral or written explanation for why they have deniedHu Jia’s appeal for parole.”
Another lawyer, Hao Jinsong, said, “We hope Hu Jia can avoidthe fate of late dissident writer Li Hong.”
Li Hong was the pen name of Zhan Jianhong, a rights activistjailed in the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Authorities refused him medicalparole in spite of his apparently failing health, and he died in December.
Hu was handed a three-and-a-half year jail term in 2008 for “incitementto subversion” after he wrote online articles critical of China’s hosting ofthe Olympics.
A campaigner for human rights and AIDS victims in China, Huwas awarded the Sakharov Prize, a major human rights award, by the EuropeanUnion in 2008.
He had acted as a key source of information for foreignmedia on human rights and environmental violations, government abuses, judicialinjustices, and the mistreatment of dissidents.
Zeng, herself an AIDS activist and blogger who won an awardfrom Paris-based Reporters Without Borders alongside Hu Jia, has kept up acampaign for his release.
Reported in Mandarinby Xin Yu. Translated by Ping Chen. Written in English by Richard Finney.