Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been nominally released from prison. This occurred a few years early because he is dying of cancer.

Prisons are known for denying prisoners needed medical care. Often by refusing to believe the problem is serious. US prisons do this, Australian prisons do this, and Chinese political prisons are probably even worse.

Activists say that China systematically (though deniably) limits political prisoners' medical care, hoping that prisoners will get sick and die.

They may not have knowingly refused to recognize Liu's cancer until it was too advanced to cure, but they shut their eyes just in case. Shall we call this Chinese Prison Roulette? It is a form of murder (though without actually breaking a law).

His supposed release from prison may be a sham. His hospital room may be a form of prison. Things the Chinese government says often have as little relationship to reality as things the troll says.

The US government ought to be a shining beacon of contrast to China's repression, but that is ever less the case.