The wife of jailed Chinese AIDS activist and rights campaigner Hu Jia says the authorities are harassing her family, including attempting to force them out of their apartment, just weeks away from his release.
Zeng Jinyan has just two months ago moved with their three-year-old daughter to the southern city of Shenzhen in the hope of escaping constant police harassment and intermittent house arrest.
"I told them I couldn't move because the kid has to go to school," said Zeng, who was asked by her current landlord to move out after officials started to put pressure on him. "The landlord doesn't want us to leave, either."
"It's just their so-called 'orders from the top' that must be obeyed," she said.
Hu is scheduled to be freed at the end of June amid fears he will continue to be held unofficially by police on his release.
Life 'easier' after move
Zeng made the move to Shenzhen amid fears that the entire family would be held under house arrest in their former Beijing home on his release, a fate which has already befallen the family of Shandong-based activist Chen Guangcheng.
"I am going to fight this with them and see if I can prevail," said Zeng, who is herself an AIDS activist and blogger who won an award from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders alongside Hu Jia, and has kept up a campaign for his release.
Zeng said her life has become much easier since the move.
"Things are a lot more relaxed here," she said. "They are much better here than in Beijing. I don't have to be under surveillance by them every day."
"When [Hu] comes out he will probably just want to take care of his family, young and old," Zeng said. "He will also want to take care of his own health."
Health concerns
Hu suffers from hepatitis and cholelithiasis (gallstones in the gallbladder or bile ducts) but authorities have denied him medical parole five times in the past without explanation, according to Zeng.
Hu was handed a three-and-a-half year jail term in 2008 for “incitement to subversion” after he wrote online articles critical of China’s hosting of the Olympics.
A campaigner for human rights and AIDS victims in China, Hu was awarded the Sakharov Prize, a major human rights award, by the European Union in 2008.
He had acted as a key source of information for foreign media on human rights and environmental violations, government abuses, judicial injustices, and the mistreatment of dissidents.
Reported by Fang Yuan for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.