Jailed China activist Hu Jia may have cancer: wife

Reuters via The Washington Post, Apr. 8, 2010-

BEIJING (Reuters) – Imprisoned Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia is suffering from a serious disease, possibly liver cancer, his wife said Thursday after making a formal appeal to security forces to release him on medical parole.

Hu’s mother saw a suspected diagnosis of liver cancer on a consent form she was asked to sign when he was taken to a prison hospital for tests on March 30, his wife Zeng Jinyan said.

Hu, 36, who already suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, has been in ill health for months, she told Reuters in an interview, but was unexpectedly kept on in the hospital after the tests.

The results were supposed to be released on April 2, Zeng said, but his family have been told that they are not out yet.

“I suspect there are two possible reasons why we haven’t received results — either it is a difficult and complicated disease that is hard to diagnose, or this is a situation that will be very hard to resolve with an outlook for the patient that is not very optimistic,” she said.

If Hu, due for release in 2011, is suffering from cancer it will come as a blow to China’s dissident community, after a string of high-profile detentions and sentences and a tightening of finance rules for non-profit groups.

A practicing Buddhist, Hu started with advocacy for rural AIDS sufferers and went on to become one of China’s most vocal advocates of democratic rights, religious freedom and of self-determination for Tibet.

He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison by a Chinese court in April 2008, for “inciting subversion of state power.” Since 2004, he had also spent long spells under house arrest and in what rights groups describe as illegal detention……. (more details from The Washington Post)