As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others in Washington mourned the death of the long-imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a Communist Party-affiliated newspaper in Beijingsaid the Nobel peace prize laureate had been “kidnapped” by the West and bestowed with “a halo which will not linger”.
On 8 October, 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights“.
“The world has failed to save one of the most conscientious and genuine Chinese”, said Wu’er, who fled China and now lives in Taiwan.
Liu’s death led to global criticism of China’s handling of the issue. In apparent protest of the award, a group of Chinese business and cultural leaders established an alternative to the Nobel, the Confucius Peace Prize, and later honoured such human rights renegades as Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe.
Liu died from multiple organ failure after being denied treatment overseas.
Ottawa’s reaction to Liu’s death came as Canada’s Governor General David Johnston is concluding a state visit to China on Friday, accompanied by a large delegation of Canadian politicians and business leaders.
“Now, we are most concerned about Liu Xia, but there has been no information about her”.
Geng said China has lodged formal protests with the United States, Germany and the United Nations, among others. “He wanted the Japanese government to support pro-democratic movements and human rights issues in China; he wanted the government to show more interest”.
“I want to tell the regime that is withholding my freedom: I have no enemies“, Liu wrote in an essay that was published worldwide in 2010.
She has been suffering severe depression, according to close friends, especially after the authorities sentenced her brother to 11 years in prison over what supporters call trumped-up charges of business fraud.
It said Liu’s family has refused the tracheostomy.
The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it was virtually beyond treatment.
China punished Norway by suspending political and economic ties – including salmon imports from Norway – until a year ago, when Oslo promised to respect “China’s core interests and major concerns”.
They also urged China to free Mr Liu’s wife, artist and poet Liu Xia, from the strict house arrest she has lived under for years even though she has not been convicted of any crime. Relatives would only be allowed to hold “a simple farewell ceremony, under severe surveillance”, Hu said, adding that Liu’s friends had been unable to find out specific details.
Despite pleas form all over the country, he was not allowed medical parole until much later, when he was hospitalised in northeast China. The Chinese government reacted by briefly suspending trade with Norway.
A plainclothes Chinese security guard attempts to stop a photographer from taking photos of an apartment building where Liu Xia, the widow of Chinese dissident and Nobel Prize victor Liu Xiaobo, has been living under house arrest in Beijing on July 14, 2017.
Prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo, the only Chinese citizen ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize while still residing in China, has died at age 61.
Despite worldwide solidarity behind Liu Xia, many supporters sense the Chinese government’s fear of her turning into an global symbol and rallying cry for human rights – and foresee an uphill battle ahead.
“Liu Xiaobo’s imprisonment in 2009 became a death sentence”.
“The Chinese government figured out 10 to 15 years ago that there was no real price to be paid”, Human Rights Watch’s China director Sophie Richardson said.
