Obituary Note: Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo, "the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil at Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him a lengthy prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while locked away," died yesterday under guard in a hospital, the New York Times reported. He was 61. The Chinese government revealed he had cancer in late June, but "even as he faced death, he was kept silenced in the First Hospital of China Medical University, still a captive of the authoritarian controls that he had fought for decades." His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest in Beijing since his Nobel Peace Prize was announced in 2010.

"He was a dissident even among dissidents," said Yu Jie, a friend and biographer. "Liu Xiaobo was willing to criticize himself and reflect on his actions in a way that even many activists in the democracy movement can't."

Liu published his first book, a critique of Confucianism titled Criticism of the Choice: Dialogues with Li Zehou, in 1987. It became a bestseller, the Los Angeles Times noted. In 2008, he helped draft Charter 08, a manifesto demanding that China's leaders adopt an independent legal system, freedom of association, separation of powers and other pillars of liberal democracy. In response, police arrested Liu and banned his publications. He was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Perry Link, a professor at UC Riverside who translated Charter 08 into English and co-edited the essay collection No Enemies, No Hatred, said that while Liu was only one of the authors of Charter 08, "he took the lead, by which I mean he advertised it--he went around to people and asked for their signatures. Then he took politically a very big step: He said he would sponsor the charter, that he'd take the rap, he'd take the political fall. And of course he did. I don't think he thought he'd win a Nobel Prize for it." Liu is also the author of June Fourth Elegies: Poems, translated by Jeffrey Yang. 

PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said: "As President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo was a friend and compatriot for writers all over the world who struggle against tyranny using words as their sole weapon. Liu Xiaobo's purported crime was no crime at all, but rather a visionary exposition on the potential future of a country he loved.... Liu Xiaobo was not afraid. His courage in life and in death is an inspiration to those who stand for freedom in China and everywhere."

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