Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, Chinas most prominent political prisoner, died Thursday at a hospital in the countrys northeast, officials said. He was 61.
Liu had been hospitalized for advanced liver cancer diagnosed in prison in May. In an online announcement, the judicial bureau of the city of Shenyang said he died of multiple organ failure.
Lius supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.
Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.
n 2010, while Liu was serving his sentence in a prison in a small city in Chinas northeast, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Norwegian-based committee citing Lius long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.
The award enraged Chinas government, which condemned it as a political farce. Within days, Lius wife, artist and poet Liu Xia, was put under house arrest, despite not being convicted of any crime.
Other Nobel laureates were more outspoken. In 2012, an appeal by 134 Nobel laureates, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called the detentions of both Lius a violation of international law and urged their immediate release. Fellow PEN members such as Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie appealed for his release in a letter June 29, after he was transferred from prison to the hospital.
