Liu Xiaobo’s family want his cancer treated outside China
Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner’s friends and relatives have applied to the authorities to allow him to leave the mainland as part of his release on medical parole
Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and his wife have applied to mainland authorities for permission to seek medical treatment overseas for his cancer, his friends say.
Liu, who was serving an 11-year jail term on subversion charges, has been released on medical parole to receive treatment for late-stage liver cancer.
The civil rights and political activist was awarded the Nobel prize in 2010, but was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony in Oslo.
Liu’s family is communicating with at least one foreign country to find offers of help for the activist to leave China, according to his friends.
He is receiving treatment at a hospital in Shenyang, in Liaoning province, for terminal liver cancer. He was reunited with his family about a week ago for the first time outside prison in eight years.
In a statement posted on Twitter, his wife, Liu Xia, said she wanted to leave China with her husband and her brother. The statement bearing Liu Xia’s signature was posted by writer and activist Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany. “It is their desperate wish to receive medical treatment overseas. This is genuine. Xiaobo says he would rather die in the West,” Liao wrote on Twitter.