China’s Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died Thursday while still in custody following a battle with cancer, authorities said, after officials ignored international pleas to let him spend his final days free and abroad.
The prominent democracy advocate died aged 61, more than a month after he was transferred from prison to a heavily-guarded hospital to be treated for late-stage liver cancer.
The legal bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang said on its website that Liu died three days after going into intensive care at the First Hospital of China Medical University.
The writer’s death silences a government critic who had been a thorn in the side of the authorities for decades and became a symbol of Beijing’s growing crackdown on dissenting voices.
Liu’s death puts China in dubious company as he became the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who passed away in a hospital while held by the Nazis in 1938.
International human rights groups, Western governments and local activists had urged authorities to free Liu and grant his final wish to be treated abroad.
Germany had offered to treat Liu, calling for a “signal of humanity” from China. The United States also said it was willing to take him in.
But officials insisted that Liu was receiving treatment from top Chinese doctors since being granted medical parole following his diagnosis in late May.
In response to calls to allow Liu to leave China, the foreign ministry repeatedly said other countries should not interfere in China’s internal affairs.
In early July, Liu’s Chinese doctors said he was not healthy enough to be sent abroad for treatment, a position that was contradicted by US and German medical experts invited by the hospital to examine Liu’s condition. The physicians offered to treat the laureate at hospitals in their home countries.
Human rights groups decried the way the government treated Liu, accusing authorities of manipulating information about his health and refusing to let him leave because they were afraid he would use the freedom to denounce China’s one-party Communist regime.
As a gaunt Liu lay in his sickbed, a video was leaked showing the Western doctors praising their Chinese counterparts — a scene that was denounced as “grotesque propaganda” by Human Rights Watch.
The German embassy said the video seemed to show that security organs were “steering the process, not medical experts”.
Empty chair
Liu was arrested in 2008 after co-writing Charter 08, a bold petition that called for the protection of basic human rights and reform of China’s political system.
He was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “subversion”. At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in 2010 he was represented by an empty chair.
Liu is also known for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.
His wife, Liu Xia, was placed under house arrest in 2010, but she was allowed to see him at the hospital. Her fate will now worry human rights groups, which had urged the government to free her alongside Liu Xiaobo.
Agence France-Presse
Agence france presse: how about guantanamo bay… and about your human rights watch… and about Yemen, and you name it. No, you don’t name it
There were a bunch of goats having grass,then the tiger came……one goat went to the tiger & offerred itself to the tiger & then the other goats cried & went about eating the grass
Lui Xiao Bo was a CIA agent and a traitor to his country.
There are plenty of dedicated people die of sickness everywhere daily, western racists pick Liu their asset to promote their hegemonic view. These racists have zero tolerance for diversity especially those coming from colonized and exploited people, yet mouthing falsehood of free speech, free expression and rule of law all the time.
Liu is terribly wrong, China does not need 300 years of colonisation to achieve present state of a powerful nation.
The irony of course is that Liu only called in the most timid of voices for democratic reform. That’s why he got the Peace Prize, and not Wei Jingsheng. As with Suu Kyi in Burma, Norway selected the weakest of advocates, not someone who might have made a real difference. The CCP, realizing this, understood that there would be no international opposition to his imprisonment. It was all a human rights charade, which Beijing played perfectly.
Actually it is not like that say if a chinese is arrested in India,Japan or South Korea & he is subjected to same treatment like what your ruler did….will your ruler then not say let us invade these countries.So a ruler should be kind,generous & compassionate.As to traitor it is like if a parent finds their son has got AIDS disease will they gun him or will they find a cure…..so same way the ruler has to find a cure for the disease of traitor among his subjects.Okay
Calling for reform is not the propreity of Liu and those western exceptionists backing him. Neither is their interpretation of democracy the yard stick that everyone should follow in whatever condition. The final yardstick of democracy is how much good it bring to the people and to the human kind.chinese government is the lead as of now.
Well, I dont want to denigrate Liu but I feel that there were more concern about Liu from the West than from Asia. The passing of Liu came and went without a ripple. I only just knew that he was one of the activists in TianAnMian which of course was a virtual guarantee that he would always be on a tight leash. It was more than a peaceful call for democracy. It was a clarion call for revolution which Deng crushed. The Nobel Prize was a death sentence same as the Congress pandering to Joshua Wong. For activiists to flourish in China, the first rule is not to collaborate wirh external organisations especially with westwern NGOs. Not too dissimilar to the furor of Donald Trump’s son talking to the Russians.
The same accusation (CIA agent and traitor) is applicable to Mao Zedong and his comrades and even to the writers of the current Chinese constitution. Because first of all Mao Zedong and his comrades asked for democracy from their rulers the KMT and promised democracy to the Chinese people; and secondly the current Chinese constitution promeses democratic elections of the Representatives of the National People’s Assembly, also democratic elections of the national leader the President. Namely everything must be done democratically according to the current Chinese constitution. The writers of such a constitution must be traitors.
Some Tian An Men activists have gotten rich and rotten with CIA or later on, CPC connections. Most end up as pathetic hardup cases holding on to their dreams or disillusions.
You flatter Norway. The Nobel Prize Committee is a CIA stooge and has little credibility.