(RSF/IFEX) - Zeng Jinyan, the wife of jailed human rights activist Hu Jia,
thanked European parliamentarians for their support in a video message
played on 17 December 2008 to a plenary session of the European parliament
during the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought award ceremony. Hu is this
year's winner of the prize, awarded by the European Parliament
(http://www.dailymotion.com/rsf_internet/video/13024651 ).

"I would like to thank our European Parliament friends from the bottom of
my heart," Zeng said with great emotion. "The European Parliament has from
the outset taken an interest in Hu Jia's case and has deployed considerable
efforts on behalf of freedom for Hu Jia and other Chinese human rights
activists, efforts that demand respect."

Unable to travel to Strasbourg to receive the award on Hu's behalf because
the authorities confiscated her passport, Zeng provided a great deal of
information about Hu's current situation in her video message.

"The good news is that Hu Jia was transferred on 10 October (. . .) to the
Beijing municipal prison, and that the conditions in which he is being held
have improved," Zeng said. "As for his health, he is looking a little
better (. . .) However, he had two blood tests in the space of a month and
we don't know what the results were. Although we asked for them, the
results of the tests have not been given to the family. This behaviour
worries us. It makes us fear that his cirrhosis has got worse."

A blogger herself, Zeng paid tribute to activists like her husband who try
to improve freedom of expression. "There are now a great many exceptional
people and people of goodwill in Chinese society who are going to great
lengths to find ways to make the real situation in China known, and to
express deeply-felt views, and the Internet is providing them with a very
interesting platform. But unfortunately there is sometimes a very high
price to be paid for this."

Zeng also talked about their young daughter, who lives with her under a
form of house arrest.  "Our child is now just one year old. This is a key
period in her life but Hu Jia is not able to be at her side. It is very
difficult for me to talk about this." She nonetheless insisted that she was
"full of hope of soon being able to hail the arrival of an open China."

The decision to award this year's prize to Hu was announced by European
Parliament president Hans Gert Pöttering on 23 October, a day after he
received a letter from the Chinese ambassador to Brussels warning of
negative consequences for the European Union's relations with China.

"If the European Parliament should award this prize to Hu Jia, that would
inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to
China-EU relations," the ambassador wrote in his letter.

Aged 35, Hu was arrested on 27 December 2007 on a charge of "inciting
subversion of state authority." Hu was tried on 18 March 2008 before a
Beijing intermediate court for posting information about matters of state
on websites based abroad. The court sentenced him on 3 April to three and a
half years in prison.

A humanitarian activist since the start of the 1990s, Hu was involved not
only in HIV prevention and helping HIV/AIDS sufferers, but also in
protecting the environment and defending prisoners of conscience. He used
the Internet, especially his blog and videos, to expose the regime's
repression of those who defend human rights.

He has not been getting the medicine he needs for a liver ailment and has
been punished several times for defending the rights of fellow inmates.

He was arrested and held incommunicado for 40 days in the spring of 2006
and, on his release, he was placed under house arrest. Police stationed
around the couple's apartment building prevented him from going out while
his wife, Zeng, was followed whenever she left the apartment.

Hu and Zeng were awarded the Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de
France special "China" prize in December 2007. "Time" magazine named Zeng
as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2007.

Updates the Hu Jia case: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/97939