Chinese prison officials thwart doctor’s effort to visit dissident
Ailing 60-year-old imprisoned over 12-line political poem
The Columbian
Published: October 12, 2013, 5:00pm
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BEIJING — Moved by the plight and failing health of a Chinese dissident imprisoned for a few lines of poetry, a retired American doctor traveled from her quiet life in Virginia to the gates of his Eastern China prison on Saturday and asked she be allowed to give him a medical evaluation.
Authorities at Prison No. 4 in Zhejiang Province refused Devra Marcus’ request to see imprisoned activist Zhu Yufu. They also temporarily confiscated the cellphone of an accompanying interpreter and deleted images from it before brusquely escorting them out of the prison, said Marcus and others who were at the prison with her.
Marcus — a 73-year-old, white-haired and bespectacled grandmother with 40-plus years as a doctor near Washington, D.C. — described the experience as surreal and at times frightening, from her surreptitious planning with a China-focused human rights group, paranoid measures to get through immigration to the tense two-and-half-hour standoff at the prison.
Explaining her decision to confront Chinese authorities known for cracking down on those who challenge them, she said, “I figured what are they possibly going to do to an old Jewish white lady from McLean?”
While human rights groups have tried various ways of assisting jailed dissidents over the years, a surprise visit by an elderly American woman to a dissident’s prison was an unorthodox and somewhat risky approach for her and for the 60-year-old Zhu, said some human rights experts.
Marcus first learned of Zhu’s imprisonment when Zhu’s siblings visited Washington to testify before Congress and needed a place to stay. Marcus’ husband — a former Reagan administration official and longtime human rights activist — offered up their house.
After hearing about Zhu’s worsening skin rashes of late and trouble walking, Marcus decided to do something about it. “That’s what doctors do when someone is sick, you try to help,” she said.
Zhu, the man she tried to visit, was sentenced to seven years after he wrote a poem in 2011 amid uprisings in the Middle East. He was charged with trying to subvert state power — the same charges under which Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and several other dissidents are being held.
The short poem — titled “It’s Time” and 12 lines long — called for people “to voice the song in your heart” and concluded, “China belongs to everyone.” U.S. officials have called for his release.
Zhu had been imprisoned twice before for his democratic activism, said his sister, Zhu Xiaoyan, who lives in the U.S. “After the first time, friends tried to get him to leave China. After the second time, the family asked him to stop for the sake of his child, but he is a stubborn man,” she said.
She and other relatives worry, however, this latest stretch in prison is breaking him physically and mentally. When she last saw him in November, his whole body and face had swollen up.
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