Liu Xiaobo, China's most famous political prisoner, 'close to death'

The condition of China’s most famous political prisoner, the democracy campaigner and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, has worsened, family friends and local reports have said.

Liu, 61, was jailed in 2009 for allegedly trying to topple China’s one-party state. He was given medical parole last month after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.

The dissident writer has been receiving treatment at a hospital in the north-eastern city of Shenyang where, according to one report, he has been separated from other patients and is guarded by plainclothes agents from China’s paramilitary armed police.

Writing on Twitter on Thursday, Ye Du, a dissident poet and family friend, said Liu’s condition had worsened and that relatives had been told he did not have much more time to live.

Citing medical staff and another family friend, the Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK reported that doctors had stopped giving Liu medication because he was too weak for treatment. He was also no longer able to eat. Yang Jianli, the friend, told RTHK Liu had developed a kidney problem as a result of the accumulation of fluid in his abdomen.

A photograph that circulated among friends and activists on Thursday showed a visibly emaciated Liu standing beside his wife, the writer Liu Xia.

Liu’s worsening health has distressed his friends and many admirers. “As someone who had a chance to talk to him in the past, I really feel heartbroken to see how he has been treated,” said Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based Amnesty International activist.

For the Chinese government it represents a public relations disaster, coming on the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had hoped to use the two-day summit to bolster China’s case to be seen as a responsible and forward-looking world power. The state now faces international embarrassment and censure over its treatment of the 2010 Nobel peace prize winner.

The Global Times – a state-run tabloid that uses the Communist party description of Liu as a “convicted criminal”, rather than a political prisoner – emphasised the efforts that were now being put into his treatment. “A team of medical experts from all over China headed by a renowned surgeon from Beijing has arrived in Shenyang to help treat Liu Xiaobo,” the newspaper reported on Thursday.

However, campaigners and critics dismiss such reports as a smokescreen intended to cover-up Beijing’s persecution of Liu and his family.

Poon said Beijing was attempting to shift the focus on to how much medical attention Liu was receiving to shirk responsibility for its “cold-blooded” treatment of the democracy activist.

Beijing had repeatedly rejected calls for Liu to be treated abroad, Poon pointed out. “They simply ignored Liu’s modest request: to live out his last days in dignity,” he said. “Now, we might lose him any time soon.”