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Posted (edited)

As the title says. The writer who writes for democracy in China. Would have been better if he did not get that disgraced noble peace prize.

 

Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winning rights activist Liu Xiaobo has been released from prison on medical parole and is being treated in hospital for late-stage liver cancer, his lawyer said on Monday.

 

Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power" after he helped write a petition known as "Charter 08" calling for sweeping political reforms in China.

 

In December 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism promoting human rights in China, causing Beijing to freeze diplomatic ties with Norway. China and Norway normalized ties in December last year.

 

Mo Shaoping, Liu's lawyer, told Reuters that Liu was being treated for late stage liver cancer in Shenyang and that medical parole had been approved. He did not elaborate.

 

Messages seen by Reuters from another lawyer for Liu, Shang Baojun, confirmed the news.

 

When asked about Liu, China's foreign ministry, the only government body that will regularly answer questions from the foreign media, said it was not aware of the situation.

 

The public security ministry and justice ministry did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment.

 

A man who answered the telephone at the Shenyang hospital where Liu is being treated said he could not check information on individual cases as there were too many patients there.

 

Tibetan writer and family friend Tsering Woeser said she had been in tears after reading online reports of Liu's illness.

 

"I'm shocked and deeply saddened," she told Reuters. "All we can do now is pray for him."

 

Liu Xia, Liu's wife, who has been under effective house arrest since her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize, is suffering from depression but has been allowed to visit him in prison about once a month, a source close to the dissident told Reuters.

 

Liu was not allowed to attend his father-in-law's funeral last year and his mother-in-law's funeral this year, said the source who asked not to be identified.

 

Liu had been incarcerated at Jinzhou Penitentiary in Liaoning, his home province in northeast China, before being moved to the hospital for treatment.

 

'INCREDIBLY SAD'

 

In Oslo, the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee which awards the peace prize strongly criticized Beijing.

 

The committee is pleased that Liu Xiaobo is out of prison, but at the same time regrets in the strongest terms that it took a serious illness before the Chinese authorities agreed to release him, it said in a rare statement.

 

He was in reality sentenced for exercising his freedom of expression and should never have been jailed, it added, reiterating a standing invitation for Liu to come to Norway.

 

Rights group Amnesty International also confirmed the news of Liu's illness. Patrick Poon, a China researcher for Amnesty, said on Twitter that the diagnosis was made on May 23.

 

William Nee, also of Amnesty, said authorities should ensure Liu was getting adequate medical care and he called for the immediate and unconditional release of Liu and his wife.

 

"Obviously, it's a shameful situation and it's incredibly sad to see one of China's most prominent intellectuals suffer from such a terrible illness when he never should've been detained in the first place," Nee said.

 

He also called for the Nobel Committee and the international community to speak up "forcefully" for Liu now.

 

Supporters, many of whom have been campaigning for Liu's release for years, took to Twitter and other platforms to express sadness at the news of his illness and denounce the Chinese government's treatment of him.

 

Activists have flagged numerous cases of abuse in detention over the years, including denial of medical treatment for political activists, charges generally disputed by the government.

 

"There have been lots of similar cases where the individual was released on medical parole just before they die," well-known and outspoken activist Hu Jia told Reuters.

 

China has acknowledge problems of mistreatment in the criminal justice system and has repeatedly vowed to crack down to address them.

 

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Venus Wu in Hong Kong, Alister Doyle in Oslo and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Robert Birsel)

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN19H0T5

 

The CCP of course has a very negative view on him.

http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=41491&page=23&do=findComment&comment=1307298

Edited by JasonJ
Posted

Nobel Prizes of this kind are toxic awards as they are now given to people of, let’s say, questionable views. I know little about Liu Xiaobo - may be he is good person, but another Nobel Prize winner, Svetlana Alexievich, recently gave interview discovering her views that sparked, let’s call it this, “discussion” in Russia.
http://planet-today.ru/geopolitika/item/71761-otkroveniya-rusofobki-zapreshchennoe-intervyu-svetlany-aleksievich

She tried to prevent it from publishing, but it was published anyway. This interview attracted attention of Rus prankers who called her as “Ukraine culture minister”, making her to say even more stupid things.

Posted (edited)

Giving Liu Xiaobo the noble peace prize inadvertently aided the CCP. The political correctness and media that abused human rights and the idea of promoting democracy also inadvertently aided the CCP, despite it being in the core interest of any westerner that argues for the sake of democracy.

Edited by JasonJ
Posted

Giving Liu Xiaobo the noble peace prize inadvertently aided the CCP. The political correctness and media that abused human rights and the idea of promoting democracy also inadvertently aided the CCP, despite it being in the core interest of any westerner that argues for the sake of democracy.

Seems to me you are putting horse behind carriage here: CCP, after learning well lessons of USSR collapse, is behaving very wise and exploit for own benefit all Western actions. I am sure they were able to exploit not giving Nobel Prize the same way as they exploited giving Nobel Prize. Is it for good or for bad – I do not know (since CCP, de-facto club of billionaires covering capitalist exploitation behind communist slogans, is way less attractive then late Communist Party of USSR, with all its disadvantages), but at least they are able to prevent collapse of China and civil war.

Posted (edited)

I found this documentary on the 1989 Tianamen Square protests and subsequent crack down to be very informative and well balanced. It includes parts with Liu Xiaobo since he was involved.

 

 

Edited by JasonJ
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

He's too weak for cancer fighting medication.

 

 

 

BEIJING – A Chinese medical team charged with treating imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has stopped using cancer-fighting drugs so as not to overwhelm his severely weakened liver, raising concerns that China’s most prominent political prisoner is critically ill.

The team decided to stop use of an inhibitor drug for advanced liver cancer in light of Liu’s rapidly deteriorating liver functions, according to a statement Friday on the website of the First Hospital of China Medical University.

It said a traditional Chinese medicine anti-tumor treatment was also suspended while low-molecular heparin had been added to treat venous thrombosis developing in Liu’s left leg.

The latest statement appears to be part of an effort by Beijing to show it is providing Liu with the best possible care, amid questions about his prison conditions and international calls for him to be freed to seek treatment abroad.

Zeng Jinyan, a close family friend in contact with Liu’s brother-in-law Liu Hui, confirmed on Friday that Liu’s situation was not optimistic.

Citing Liu Hui, Zeng said the inhibitor drug, Sorafenib, has failed to work on Liu Xiaobo.

“He is yet to see any improvement after two to three weeks, but its side effects are causing his liver functions to badly deteriorate with severe accumulation of abdominal fluid,” Zeng wrote in a statement posted online. “So the drug must be suspended, and the focus has shifted to preserve his liver and to give his body a chance to breathe.”

Liu was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May while serving an 11-year sentence for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms that would end China’s one-party rule. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, the year after he was convicted and jailed by a Chinese court.

In the years since, China has ignored international calls to free Liu while isolating him to the degree that he’s been unable to convey any message to the outside world. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under strict house arrest in Beijing despite never being accused of any crime. Even after he was transferred to the hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang under a medical parole, Liu, his wife and family members were largely prevented from communicating with the outside.

In her statement, Zeng repeated the call that Liu should be freed and allowed to seek treatment overseas. Before then, Liu’s doctors should be able to speak freely about his medical treatment, and Liu should be transferred to a top international hospital in China, she wrote.

Although the Chinese government has so far showed no sign that it would free Liu or allow him to travel overseas, it has acceded to family requests to allow liver cancer experts from Germany, the U.S. and elsewhere to join the Chinese medical team treating Liu.

Apart from the hospital’s statements, China has released little information about Liu’s situation and supporters who have visited the Shenyang hospital have been unable to locate him.

China has rejected outside calls for his release as interference in its domestic affairs and it’s unclear if any foreign experts had yet arrived in Shenyang.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/07/07/asia-pacific/chinese-nobel-laureate-liu-xiaobo-weak-keep-getting-cancer-drugs/#.WWBglIR97cs

Posted

He died. RIP.

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed condolences for the death of Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Liu Xiaobo on Thursday and called on China to release his wife Liu Xia and let her leave the country.

 

"Today, I join those in China and around the world in mourning the tragic passing of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died while serving a lengthy prison sentence in China for promoting peaceful democratic reform," Tillerson said in a statement.

 

"I call on the Chinese government to release Liu Xia from house arrest and allow her to depart China, according to her wishes."

 

Liu Xiaobo, a prominent dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, died on Thursday after being denied permission to leave the country for treatment of late-stage liver cancer.

 

U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed Tillerson's call for Liu Xia's freedom and described her husband as "one of the great moral voices of our time." She said his treatment was "a sobering reminder of China’s shameful disregard for basic freedoms."

 

Republican Senator Tom Cotton said Liu Xiaobo has shown "a quiet but formidable courage that will live on in the hearts of all Chinese people who long to be free.”

 

"To deprive a man of treatment and watch him die a slow, painful death is an outrage against humanity. But the Communist regime was so cruel toward Liu Xiaobo because its leaders knew, in their hearts, the power of his message," he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-usa-idUSKBN19Y21N
Posted

China is a nation of conflicts and while I try to not be overly conscious of it the more I see of China, Chinese policy, and Chinese products the more I am impressed with every/any other nation. I think the wheels will come off the Chinese Economic Miracle and when it does the failure will be epic.

The way China treats dissidents goes back to the bad old days of work camps and gulags and while China thinks it is so great the reality is that everything China has and is has been taken from the work of a populace that deserves the chance to be free. Free is hard work and not for the faint of heart but free is better than enslaved

  • 10 months later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 9 months later...
Posted

As June 4th comes about, CCP's take on it. Legitimizing the massacre.

 

 

June 4 marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident. The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have determined the nature of the incident. Chinese society has also made a comprehensive summary of it. Dropping the incident thereafter has been aimed at helping the country leave the shadow behind, avoid disputes, and help all Chinese people face the future.

We consider such practice a political success, although some people have criticized it from the perspective of news governance. Merely afflicting China once, the incident has not become a long-term nightmare for the country. Neither has the incident's anniversary ever been placed in the teeth of the storm. It has become a faded historical event, rather than an actual entanglement.

The Chinese government's control of the incident in 1989 has been a watershed marking the differences between China and former Eastern European socialist countries, including the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Since the incident, China has successfully become the world's second largest economy, with rapid improvement of people's living standards. The policy of avoiding arguing has served as a contributor to the country's economic take-off.

Today's China obviously has no political conditions to suddenly reproduce the riot of 30 years ago. Chinese society, including its intellectual elite, is now far more mature than it was in 1989. In those years, China's reform was carried out prior to those of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. China was completely inexperienced, with an intellectual circle filled with idealism. Chinese society today has seen enough of the political tragedies that occurred in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and some Arab countries.

Having become politically mature, we now understand the significance of the country's continuous development through evolutions instead of revolutions. We are also aware of the difficulties and complexity at the practical level.

As a vaccination for the Chinese society, the Tiananmen incident will greatly increase China's immunity against any major political turmoil in the future.

We have noticed that every year around June 4, certain forces outside the Chinese mainland stir up public opinion and attack China. Such forces consist of two groups of people: student leaders and dissidents who fled abroad after 1989, and Western politicians and media outlets.

The first group's understanding of the incident remains fixed in 1989. They refuse to correct their understanding of China's development and the changes that the world has been through. Their interests have been decoupled from the Chinese people and have merged with anti-China forces outside China. Their attitude toward the incident cannot represent those of today's Chinese public.

Western politicians' discussions of the incident are mainly influenced by their countries' relations with China. Due to the deterioration of China-US ties, US officials have launched fierce attacks against China that have focused on the incident since last year. But Chinese people are clear that those officials are not genuinely concerned about Chinese human rights, but are making use of the incident as a diplomatic tool to challenge China.

However, all these noises will have no real impact on Chinese society. The actions of the external forces are completely in vain.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1152903.shtml

Posted

What surprises me about the Tienanmen timeline is how China avoided reverting to its ideologically leftist roots in the aftermath. Somehow, its response was to shift toward more reform.

 

They are an enigma in various ways.

Posted

What surprises me about the Tienanmen timeline is how China avoided reverting to its ideologically leftist roots in the aftermath. Somehow, its response was to shift toward more reform.

 

They are an enigma in various ways.

Deng Xiaoping was leading the economic reforms at the onset of the 1980s. He was also in the end that sided with the CCP hardliners and agreed to crush the on going protests. He would still want to see through the economic reforms in order to make China strong. But what he and the other hardliners would roll back on was the opening up of China in other areas besides raw international trade. CCP would remain the absolute nanny of the state.

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