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 suburban Washington 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 Washington-area doctor — 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 2½-hour standoff at the prison.
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