Bad day dawns for China

Melinda Liu of Newsweek writes:

If this isn’t already a perfect storm of bad press that threatens to tarnish the Summer Olympics, consider this: tomorrow morning HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia is slated to appear in a Beijing court hearing for the first time since he was detained Dec. 27 and charged with subversion. In November the prominent activist had made critical remarks about the Olympics in a webcam conversation with EU parliamentarians – and now he’s seen as the dissident poster boy for critics who maintain that China’s patchy human-rights record and imprisonment of political prisoners justifies a boycott of the Games.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Hu and his wife Zeng Jinyan are devout converts to Tibetan Buddhism.

I blogged about Hu Jia here.