Liu Xiaobo BT 20 3

Liu Xiaobo 1955- Chinese Writer and Human Rights Activist Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

BIRTH

Liu Xiaobo was born on December 28, 1955, in Changchun, China, a large, industrial city in the northeastern part of the country and the capital of Jilin province. His parents were intellectuals, and his father was employed as a university professor. He has an older brother, Liu Xiaoguang, and a younger brother, Liu Xiaoxuan, who heads the engineering college at the Guangdong University of Technology.

YOUTH

Little information is available about Liu’s early life. After middle school, he followed his parents to a rural area in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in northern China, where they lived from 1969 to 1973 during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution—a social movement initiated by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong to align the areas of education, art, and literature with communist ideology. As was typical of the educated youth of his generation, he was sent to the countryside at age 19 and spent two years laboring in a people’s commune in his home province of Jilin. Referencing this time in Liu’s life, his close friend Yang Jianli, now in exile, told the Guardian: “Some took it as suffering and thought they should reward themselves when they had power and money later. Liu Xiaobo took it as experience that helped him understand the real suffering of the Chinese people at the hands of the Chinese government.” In 1976 Liu got a job as a construction worker in his hometown of Changchun, the automotive hub of China.

EDUCATION

When the Communist Party reinstated the national university entrance exam in 1977 in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Liu was admitted to Jilin University to study Chinese literature. While in college, he and six of his schoolmates formed the poetry group The Innocent Hearts, and Liu became interested in Western philosophy. After graduating from Jilin University in 1982, he attended Beijing Normal University, earning a master’s degree in Chinese literature in 1984. He lectured at Beijing Normal while completing his postgraduate studies and received his Ph.D. in Chinese literature in 1988; he was the first student to obtain a doctorate degree in literature under the communist system.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

In 1987 Liu published his first book, the nonfiction bestseller Criticism of the Choice, in which he challenged the ideology of professor Li Zehou, an influential voice in the intellectual community at the time. He also criticized the Chinese tradition of Confucianism, a system of ethical and philosophical principles based on the teachings of the ancient Chinese thinker Confucius. Liu became a professor at Beijing Normal in 1988 and worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Oslo, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University in New York. His academic career ended abruptly in 1989 when he decided to return home to participate in the prodemocracy demonstrations underway in Beijing. He published The Fog of Metaphysics, a comprehensive survey of Western philosophies, that same year.

Tiananmen Square Protests

On April 27, 1989, Liu returned to Beijing to take part in the student-led prodemocracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, cutting short his lecture series at Columbia to join the movement. The protests began with a student march through the capital city in memory of Hu Yaobang, a recently deceased political leader who favored social and economic reform. Liu rushed home to become an advisor to the student movement. One of few professors to offer direct assistance to the protesters, he provided strategic guidance and gave speeches in support of their cause. The students called for freedom, democracy, and human rights for Chinese citizens, who face limits on many civil liberties, including freedoms of expression, association, and religion. In China, the Communist Party holds a monopoly on political and judicial power. In addition, the government censors telecommunications and media coverage, and police monitor the activities of those suspected of opposing government policy.

On June 2, 1989, Liu staged a hunger strike with three other demonstrators to protest the use of military force to evacuate Tiananmen Square. He called for both the students and the government to abandon the ideology of class struggle in favor of a political culture based on dialogue and compromise. In a written statement issued at the start of the hunger strike and translated into English in London’s Independent newspaper, the protesters urged: “We must do this because hatred can only produce violence and dictatorship. We must adopt the spirit of tolerance. We must begin to build up Chinese democracy with a democratic spirit of tolerance and concept of co-operation. Democratic politics is a politics without enemies, without hatred. Instead it means a politics based on mutual respect, mutual tolerance, and mutual compromise, through consultation, discussion, and the electoral process.”

Unfortunately, Liu was powerless to prevent bloodshed in Tiananmen Square. On June 4, 1989, following seven weeks of peaceful student protests, the Chinese army killed hundreds—possibly thousands—of demonstrators in an event known as the June 4th Massacre. Liu, however, played a critical role in preventing slaughter on a much larger scale. On the night of June 3rd, before the army forced the protesters out of Tiananmen Square using tanks and guns, Liu disarmed a group of workers who were prepared to fight the troops. Seizing and smashing a rifle during a rally shortly before the military crackdown, he emphasized the importance of peaceful, rather than violent, resistance, arguing: “Whatever extreme the government takes will help it dig its own grave.” He negotiated the nonviolent retreat of several thousand protesters, brokering a deal with the army to allow the last demonstrators to evacuate the square in the final hours of the conflict.

Witnessing the government’s violent response to the Tiananmen Square protests was, as Liu put it, a “major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road.” On June 6, 1989, he was arrested for his role in the prodemocracy movement. He was expelled from Beijing Normal University three months later, and his writings were banned. The government issued publications and news reports denouncing him as the “black hand” and “madman” behind the movement. Reflecting back on the government’s actions against him, Liu explained: “Merely for publishing different political views and taking part in a peaceful democracy movement, a teacher lost his lectern, a writer lost his right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the opportunity to give talks publicly.” Liu spent 19 months in detention before being convicted of “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” in January 1991. He avoided a prison sentence on account of his “major meritorious action” in preventing further bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.

Human Rights Activism

Upon his release, Liu immediately resumed writing, focusing on the topics of human rights and politics. “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,” he explained. Although his works were still banned in China, he published the memoir The Monologues of a Doomsday’s Survivor in Taiwan in 1992. Despite the dangers of being an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, he remained dedicated to the prodemocracy movement. “Living in an authoritarian society, doing the prodemocracy work that I do, the possibility of being sent to prison at any time doesn't actually scare me too much,” he said. “… The way I see it, people like me live in two prisons in China. You come out of the small, fenced-in prison, only to enter the bigger, fence-less prison of society.”

In May 1995 he was taken into custody for petitioning the government to initiate political reforms and reassess its response to the Tiananmen Square protests. Authorities held him under residential surveillance before arresting him in October 1996 for questioning the merits of China’s single-party political system, criticizing China’s policy toward Taiwan, and calling for a dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He was sentenced to three years in a reeducation-through-labor camp for “disturbing public order” through his statements.

Liu was released in 1999. At the turn of the millennium, he continued writing articles on political reform in his country and published compilations of political criticism and poetry in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He also petitioned for freedom of expression and the release of prisoners. In addition, he sought compensation for the families of victims of the June 4th Massacre through his work with the Tiananmen Mothers, a support group formed by parents of students killed in the 1989 protests. In 2001 he established an Internet connection in his home, using this tool to distribute his writings. “The Internet is God’s present to China,” he said. “It is the best tool for the Chinese people … to cast off slavery and strive for freedom.” In 2004, however, authorities cut his phone line and Internet connection when he released an essay criticizing the government’s use of “subversion” charges to silence authors and activists. He was detained overnight and thereafter subjected to regular police surveillance, signaling a government crackdown on outspoken intellectuals.

From 2003 to 2007 Liu served as president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, an association of independent writers. The organization’s mission is to defend freedom of expression, which in other countries is a basic civil right. It provides assistance to those writers who are threatened, harassed, and convicted of crimes on account of their words. PEN is a worldwide association affiliated with the United Nations that advocates on behalf of authors persecuted for their opinions.

“Charter 08”

Liu co-authored a manifesto entitled “Charter 08,” a text modeled after the Czech document “Charter 77,” which called for political change in communist Czechoslovakia and contributed to the crumbling of the Soviet bloc. The goal of the authors was to reach out to the Chinese people about a new direction for the country. A campaign for constitutional democracy, “Charter 08” champions basic individual rights such as free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. It also calls for an end to one-party rule and a new political system founded on the principles of democracy and human rights. The 4,000-word petition was originally signed by 303 intellectuals and has since been signed by more than 10,000 Chinese citizens from all walks of life, including political scientists, farmers, economists, artists, and even some government officials, revealing that the authors’ views are shared by a broad cross-section of the Chinese public. “The Chinese people,” the manifesto states, “… include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.” “Charter 08” was released on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document credited with inspiring the modern-day human rights movement. The Chinese government has since pulled it from the Internet. It was published in English in the New York Review on January 15, 2009.

On December 8, 2008, two days before “Charter 08” was formally released, policemen arrived at Liu’s home with a warrant for his arrest. They stayed through the night to search the home and confiscated computers, books, and other personal belongings. “There were more than a dozen police,” his wife, Liu Xia, told the Los Angeles Times by phone two days after his disappearance. “I am very frightened. Nobody can get in touch with him.” Liu was sent to an undisclosed location in Beijing and held there for six months—without access to a lawyer or writing materials—while authorities gathered evidence for his case. Nearly all of the original signatories of “Charter 08” were interrogated about Liu’s role in its preparation. In March 2009, when the police allowed Liu to meet with his wife, Liu revealed that he was being held in solitary confinement in a small windowless cell. Meanwhile, several prominent authors, scholars, lawyers, and human rights activists issued a letter to Hu Jintao, the president of China, calling for Liu’s immediate release. Liu received the prestigious PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in April 2009.

Liu was officially arrested for “suspicion of inciting subversion of state power” on June 24, 2009, and was moved to the No. 1 Detention Center of Beijing City. The police turned over his case to the state prosecutor’s office in December 2009; he faced charges for six articles he wrote on political reform over several years and his work on “Charter 08.” His trial began on December 23, 2009. Several diplomats were in attendance, including ambassadors from the United States, Canada, Australia, and multiple European nations. Lu Xia, because she was forced to testify as a prosecution witness, could not attend the proceedings. Liu pleaded not guilty, but he was not permitted a full defense during the two-hour trial. His counsel submitted a written statement arguing that he was denied the right of free speech enshrined in both international law and the Chinese constitution, which had been revised in 2004 to guarantee fundamental human rights. When Liu attempted to provide evidence in his own defense, the presiding judge interrupted him after 15 minutes for exceeding the time limit. In his final statement, Liu expressed: “I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed twenty years ago in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’— I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies.”

For his role in organizing “Charter 08,” Liu was found guilty of inciting subversion of state power on December 25, 2009. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two additional years without political rights, the longest sentence ever given for that charge. He released a statement after his sentencing in which he maintained: “For an intellectual thirsty for freedom in a dictatorial country, prison is the very first threshold. Now I have stepped over the threshold, and freedom is near.” A month later, his lawyers filed an appeal that concluded: “Liu Xiaobo is innocent, and any verdict that finds Liu Xiaobo guilty cannot withstand the trial of history.” On February 11, 2010, the Beijing Municipal High People’s Court rejected Liu’s appeal. He was moved to Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province, 500 kilometers northeast of his home in Beijing, on May 26, 2010. His prison sentence expires on June 21, 2020.

Nobel Peace Prize

Upon learning of Liu’s unexpectedly harsh sentence, human rights leaders around the globe came to his defense, urging his consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. This honor, they argued, would not only recognize Liu’s valiant human rights efforts, but also inspire future rights activists in China and other nations. Furthermore, it would signal to China that the world is watching and intends to draw attention to the fundamental freedoms that the Chinese government denies its citizens.

On October 8, 2010, the Nobel Committee announced its selection of Liu as the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner for “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” Liu was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded the prize and one of three to have received it while in prison. The announcement prompted strong reactions, both in China and abroad. The intellectual community was ecstatic, viewing the prize as a turning point in the lengthy struggle for democracy in China. “The biggest benefit, in my opinion, would be that a prize for Liu Xiaobo would help millions of Chinese, both inside China and around the world, to see and feel more clearly that ‘China’ can be much more than the Chinese Communist Party,” said Professor Perry Link in Time. The Chinese government, on the other hand, was outraged. Foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu responded: “To give the Peace Prize to such a person is completely contrary to the purpose of the award and a blasphemy of the Peace Prize.”

Following the Nobel announcement, China launched an aggressive effort to characterize the award as an “obscenity,” claiming that it should not be granted to a man it considers both criminal and subversive. Viewing the award as the Western world’s plot to undermine the Chinese Communist Party, China put pressure on the international community to boycott the ceremony, convincing 19 ambassadors to decline the invitation. It also criticized the Nobel committee for interfering with internal Chinese affairs and humiliating the country on the international stage. Nobel chairman Thorbjørn Jagland responded in a New York Times editorial: “Mr. Liu’s imprisonment is clear proof that China’s criminal law is not in line with its Constitution. … Governments are obliged to ensure the right to free expression—even if the speaker advocates a different social system. These are rights that the Nobel committee has long upheld by honoring those who struggle to protect them with the Peace Prize, including … Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his fight for civil rights in the United States.”

Inside China, authorities prevented Liu’s supporters from leaving the country before the ceremony and placed some—including Liu’s wife—under house arrest or surveillance. Chinese cyber police blocked access to news coverage of the Nobel honors and barred Internet searches on his name to prevent spreading the news of Liu’s win to the citizens of China. Additionally, Chinese journalists were instructed to report only on the basis of the official government press release. The government-owned China Daily, for example, labeled the award “a provocation” and “a Western plot to contain a rising China.” To counter the Nobel Peace Prize, China created its own honor, the Confucius Peace Prize, which it awarded to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan the day before the official Nobel ceremony. Although Chinese law permits one family visit per month to prisoners, the government reportedly has blocked visits to Liu since shortly after the Nobel announcement. Upon visiting him in October, however, Liu’s wife reported that when he learned he was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he wept and dedicated it to the “Tiananmen martyrs.”

On December 10, 2010, Liu was recognized at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway. An empty chair marked his absence, symbolizing China’s policies to isolate and repress dissidents. The last time a detained recipient of the prize was unrepresented at the awards gala was in 1935 when Nazi Germany prevented pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from attending. “We regret that the laureate is not present here today,” Jagland stated in his presentation speech. “He is in isolation in a prison in northeast China. Nor can the laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, or his closest relatives be here with us. No medal or diploma will therefore be presented here today. This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate.” The presentation ceremony also included a complete reading of Liu’s “I Have No Enemies” speech, the final statement Liu had prepared for his 2009 trial but was not permitted to present to the court in its entirety. President Barack Obama, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, issued a statement on the day of the ceremony, emphasizing: “Mr. Liu reminds us that human dignity also depends upon the advance of democracy, open society, and the rule of law. The values he espouses are universal, his struggle is peaceful, and he should be released as soon as possible.”

Despite the setbacks he has suffered as an activist over the past two decades, Liu has maintained that democratic change is inevitable in China. “I firmly believe that China's political progress will not stop, and I, filled with optimism, look forward to the advent of a future free China,” he said. “For there is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme.” The international community has continued to support his cause, organizing protests on his behalf. Activists in Hong Kong marked the first anniversary of his conviction with a march outside the Chinese embassy, demonstrating Liu’s contention that “the driving force for positive change within the Chinese political system does not come from the top, it comes from ordinary people.” Harvard University Press plans to publish the first English-language compilation of his work in 2012.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

Liu married the poet and photographer Liu Xia in a modest ceremony in early 1996, just before he was sentenced to three years in a reeducation-through-labor camp. They were unable to legally document the marriage at first because Liu’s household registration was in a different municipality. “Right after that he was put into a labor camp,” Liu Xia told the Observer. “When I said I was his wife they would ask for the marriage certificate. So I couldn’t see him for 18 months.” In spite of these challenges, Liu Xia looks back on the experience with fondness: “I was very happy because once we were officially married I could visit him,” she said. Liu and Liu Xia were both previously married. They initially met in college in 1982 and maintained a friendship based on their mutual love of poetry. They remained acquaintances until the 1990s when, following their divorces, they became a couple. “At the very beginning, we fell in love because of literature; he always liked my writing. And my cooking,” Liu Xia stated in the Observer. With her husband behind bars, she misses the simple, everyday moments they shared together. “It’s daily life I miss most; going to the market to shop for food and asking him what he would like. Just things like that,” she said.

After meeting with her husband in prison to notify him of the 2010 Nobel honor, Liu Xia was placed under house arrest in Beijing, which has prompted condemnation by the international community since she has not been accused of a crime. In response to American criticism of her treatment by the Chinese government, authorities allowed her to eat a meal with her elderly parents in January 2011 while President Hu Jintao was visiting the United States. She is unable to communicate via telephone or the Internet and is under constant surveillance. Liu has described his wife as “a woman with a very strong sense of justice and responsibility.” “She understands why I do this work,” he added, “despite the fact it means she gets followed by the police.”

Before being sent to prison to serve his 11-year sentence, Liu issued a public statement in which he expressed, through poetry, his enduring love for his wife: “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,” he said tenderly.

HOBBIES AND OTHER INTERESTS

Those close to Liu have cited his steadfast dedication to writing as one of his defining characteristics. They have described him as bookish, multilayered, and independent-minded, and they have identified his desire for complete freedom of expression as that which led him to political activism. “Actually he is less of a political figure to me than a passionate poet,” explained one of his oldest friends, Liao Yiwu, in the Guardian. Liu still enjoys writing poems, according to his wife. Even when the prison warden took away his pen and paper, he continued to compose poetry and commit it to memory. He is fond of the writings of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In prison, Liu reportedly shares a cell with five other inmates, has access to books published in China, and is allowed rare visits from his wife. For exercise, he runs for an hour a day. Despite his incarceration, he has remained remarkably optimistic, stressing ways in which conditions in the prison have improved. Friends have described him as being very courteous to others. He has always insisted on nonviolence and rationality in his thoughts and actions, as reflected in his final statement to the Beijing court before serving his prison sentence: “What I demanded of myself was this: whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity. … Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience.”

SELECTED WRITING CREDITS

Criticism of the Choice: Dialogues with Li Zehou, 1987 (nonfiction) Aesthetic and Human Freedom, 1988 (doctoral thesis) The Fog of Metaphysics, 1989 (nonfiction) “The June 2nd Hunger Strike Declaration,” 1989 (essay) The Monologues of a Doomsday’s Survivor, 1992 (memoir) A Nation That Lies to Conscience, 2000 (political criticism) Selection of Poems by Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia, 2000 (poetry) Future of Free China Exists in Civil Society, 2005 (political criticism) Single-Blade Poisonous Sword: Criticism of Chinese Nationalism, 2005 (political criticism) “The Internet Is God’s Present to China,” 2006 (essay) “Authoritarianism in the Light of the Olympic Flame,” 2008 (essay) “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement,” 2009 (speech)

HONORS AND AWARDS

Hellman-Hammett Grant (Human Rights Watch): 1990; 1996 Fondation de France Prize (Reporters Without Borders): 2004, for defending freedom of the press Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award (Hong Kong Journalists Association): 2004; 2005; 2006 Homo Homini Award (People in Need): 2008 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (PEN American Center): 2009 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism (Human Rights Watch): 2010 Hermann Kesten Award (PEN German Center): 2010 Nobel Peace Prize: 2010