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Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61

P

Perfect Blue

Banned
BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61.

The bureau of justice of Shenyang, the city in northeastern China where Mr. Liu was being treated for cancer, announced on its website that Mr. Liu had died.

The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it was virtually beyond treatment. Officially, Mr. Liu gained medical parole. But even as he faced death, he was kept silenced and under guard in a hospital, still a captive of the authoritarian controls that he had fought for decades.

The police have kept his wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest and smothering surveillance, preventing her from speaking out about Mr. Liu’s death and his belated treatment for cancer.

“Can’t operate, can’t do radiotherapy, can’t do chemotherapy,” Ms. Liu said in a brief video message to a friend when her husband’s fatal condition was announced. The message quickly spread online.
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More here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/...column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
 
B

Blablurn

Member
RIP.

China killed him.

How they treated him was shameful.

And the fact that the public doesn't even really know him or his story is even more shameful.

This country can be so shitty sometimes.
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
Blablurn said:
RIP.

China killed him.

How they treated him was shameful.

And the fact that the public doesn't even really know him or his story is even more shameful.

This country can be so shitty sometimes.
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To this day, many Chinese exchange students in universities in Canada and the US walk out of classrooms when Tiananmen Square is shown or discussed. It's a sad situation.
 
Z

Zolo

Member
TheGreatPotato said:
To this day, many Chinese exchange students in universities in Canada and the US walk out of classrooms when Tiananmen Square is shown or discussed. It's a sad situation.
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XVSH3CZ.jpg
 
T

Timbuktu

Member
TheGreatPotato said:
To this day, many Chinese exchange students in universities in Canada and the US walk out of classrooms when Tiananmen Square is shown or discussed. It's a sad situation.
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Source? When I spoke with students from mainland China when I was at university in the UK, it seems that they were told about Tiananmen Square and what happened, but we did talk about it and they looked it up when they were studying here.
 
X

Xe4

Banned
RIP. I hope one day he will be seen as the hero he was in China, similar to many are in other countries. Too bad the country is treating him as shitty as they are now.
 
M

Madness

Member
Blablurn said:
In China? No one will know he ever existed. They didn't even use his full name in official stories.
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Yep. And people will use current Anti-American sentiment to prop up a regime/government that is riduculously authoritarian and draconian. North Korea would not exist were it for China. They are in a border standoff with India over a measly few miles of Bhutanese land. Is there a single neighbor they are not hostile too.

My one wish would be to see the Republic of China re-exist with control over the Mainland. Hong Kong and Taiwan show you what China could be with democratic reform. Instead we have to watch USSR 2.0 but this time supported and propped up with the West exert influence. But they are just as imperialistic and hegemonic. Just not forcing communism on everyone.

This poor man. No one will remember he lived, died, or what he stood for in the very country he pretty much gave his life up for.
 
X

Xe4

Banned
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes said:
Of course not. It doesn't mean I'm going to be weeping for a piece of shit that held some very abhorrent views.
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Such as? The only slightly controversial views of his were in the 80's, which he later walked back, and were an understandable response to pushing against Chinese propaganda which had been shoved down his throat since an early age. The majority of his views have been shaped by living under an oppressive dictatorship, which is pretty understandable.

I cannot understand why you could hate someone who spent much of his life imprisoned because of his fight for democracy and reform.
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
Wenger'sBakedBaguettes said:
A US-funded colonialist-loving warmonger. Rot in hell.
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Wow.

Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Lecture said:
If I may be permitted to say so, the most fortunate experience of these past twenty years has been the selfless love I have received from my wife, Liu Xia. She could not be present as an observer in court today, but I still want to say to you, my dear, that I firmly believe your love for me will remain the same as it has always been. Throughout all these years that I have lived without freedom, our love was full of bitterness imposed by outside circumstances, but as I savor its aftertaste, it remains boundless. I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart. Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and brightness in my heart, and filling every minute of my time in prison with meaning. My love for you, on the other hand, is so full of remorse and regret that it at times makes me stagger under its weight. I am an insensate stone in the wilderness, whipped by fierce wind and torrential rain, so cold that no one dares touch me. But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you.

My dear, with your love I can calmly face my impending trial, having no regrets about the choices I've made and optimistically awaiting tomorrow. I look forward to [the day] when my country is a land with freedom of expression, where the speech of every citizen will be treated equally well; where different values, ideas, beliefs, and political views ... can both compete with each other and peacefully coexist; where both majority and minority views will be equally guaranteed, and where the political views that differ from those currently in power, in particular, will be fully respected and protected; where all political views will spread out under the sun for people to choose from, where every citizen can state political views without fear, and where no one can under any circumstances suffer political persecution for voicing divergent political views. I hope that I will be the last victim of China's endless literary inquisitions and that from now on no one will be incriminated because of speech.

Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth. To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth.
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Yeah this guy sounds like a real scumbag!
 
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