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Verna Yu

The health of jailed Chinese journalist Gao Yu has taken a turn for the worse with her suffering regular severe heart pain, her brother said yesterday.
Gao, 71 - jailed for seven years in April after being convicted of the charge of leaking state secrets - had been given only Chinese medicine to deal with each attack while in police custody awaiting the outcome of her appeal, but had not been given regular treatment for her heart condition, said Gao Wei, who visited her on Monday.
"She was strong and spirited, but she was thin and suffering from heart pain," he said.
He said she was also suffering badly from a chronic skin allergy.
Gao has a long history of heart disease and high blood pressure.
Her heart problem started 25 years ago when she was held in police custody as a result of her pro-reform writings and her involvement in the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement.
Gao, known for her hard-hitting reports on elite politics, was jailed for the third time two months ago.
She had been accused of leaking an internal Communist Party memo called Document No9 to the US-based news website Mingjing - although both she and Mingjing denied this.
Document No9 ordered cadres to tackle seven subversive influences on society, including "Western constitutional democracy" and "universal values" such as human rights and free speech.
She was forced to make a confession on state television in May last year, but later told prosecutors it was extracted under coercion when threats were made against her son.
Gao's lawyer Shang Baojun also confirmed that she was suffering from heart pain.
Gao has appealed against her sentence and the outcome should be known later this month, he said.
Shang said he had received new evidence from Mingjing founder Ho Pin to prove that Gao was innocent and would be submitting the new information to the court next week.
Gao has already spent a total of seven years in jail.
She was locked up for 15 months on the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, and was jailed again in 1993 for six years for leaking state secrets in her writing on politics.
Among Gao's most influential output in recent years was an article she wrote in January, 2013 in which she reported President Xi Jinping's lamentation in an internal speech that when the Soviet Union collapsed, "nobody was man enough to stand up and resist". She concluded that Xi's priority was not political reform but to restore late leader Mao Zedong's legitimacy and to uphold the Communist Party's one-party rule.
In May 2013, she wrote a commentary on the party's resistance to Western "subversive" ideologies as set out in Document No9 - the document she was later accused of leaking. She concluded that a country run by leaders who lacked a modern approach and vision would inevitably fail.
Political observers say Gao has ironically become the victim of the intensified ideological controls she has reported. Her arrest and sentencing came amid a crackdown on liberal intellectuals, journalists, rights lawyers, NGOs and celebrity bloggers, which rights groups say is the worst in more than two decades.


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Human rights in China

Fears over deteriorating health of veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu jailed for leaking state secrets

Chinese journalist Gao Yu was jailed for seven years in April after being convicted of leaking state secrets. Photo: AP

Veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu jailed for seven years for leaking state secrets

Gao Yu says she will appeal against the sentence. Photo: EPA

Gao Yu says she will appeal against the sentence. Photo: Associated Press

News

China

People & Culture

No regular medical care for heart problems of Gao Yu, 71, imprisoned for leaking state secrets


The health of jailed Chinese journalist Gao Yu has taken a turn for the worse with her suffering regular severe heart pain, her brother said yesterday.
