Posted
January 12th, 2011
by
Date of Birth: 28 December 1955
Profession: Prominent dissident writer, former President and current Board member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre
Date of arrest: 8 December 2008
Sentence: Eleven years in prison
Expiry: 7 December 2019
Details of arrest: Arrested for his role in Charter 08, an extraordinary declaration he had co-authored calling for political reform, greater human rights and an end to one-party rule. Held under Residential Surveillance, a form of pre-trial detention, at an undisclosed location in Beijing before being formally charged with ‘spreading rumours and defaming the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years’ on 23 June 2009. The charge is said to be based on his endorsement of Charter 08 and several online articles published between 2001-2008.
Details of the trial: On 25 December 2009 Liu was sentenced to eleven years in prison and two years deprivation of political rights on charges of ‘incitement to subversion of state power.’
Place of detention: Public Security Bureau (PSB) Detention Centre in Douge Zhuang, Beijing. Treatment in prison: Since being transferred to a detention centre he reports “an improvement” in his conditions, as he now has regular outdoor time and five detainees in his cell with whom he can talk. During his six-month pre-trial detention he was held incommunicado in a windowless room without any outdoor time and with only two family visits.
Other information: Liu Xiaobo is among a large number of dissidents to have been detained or harassed after issuing an open letter calling on the National People’s Congress Standing Committee to ratify the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and launching Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reforms and human rights. These activities formed part of campaigns across China to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December), and the Charter has now been signed by more than 8000 scholars, journalists, freelance writers and activists. Recipient of American PEN 2009 Freedom to Write award. On 10 December 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his long and non-violent struggle for human rights in China. His absence from the ceremony, which was attended by the representatives of PEN responsible for his nomination, was marked with an Empty Chair. Following the announcement of the prize on 8 October 2010, Chinese authorities tried to undercut the award in every way possible. They branded Liu a criminal and blocked news reports about the prize; warned foreign governments not to send representatives to the award ceremony; harassed Liu’s supporters, friends, and family; and placed his wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest and prevented her and other family members from travelling to Oslo for the official award ceremony. Still, Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, and our colleagues at ICPC are unbowed, and more and more Chinese citizens are seeking ways around the internet firewall to learn more about their Nobel laureate.
Previous political imprisonment/problems: Liu Xiaobo first received support from PEN in 1989, when he was one of a group of writers and intellectuals given the label the “Black Hands of Beijing” by the government, and arrested for their part in the Tiananmen Square protests. Liu has since spent a total of five years in prison, including a three year sentence passed in 1996, and has suffered frequent short arrests, harassment and censorship.
Honorary member: Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), PEN American Center, English PEN, Portuguese PEN Centre.
Writing sample: From ‘One Letter’. Translated by Jeffrey Yang.
two sets of iron rails
unexpectedly overlap
moths flap toward lamp
light, an eternal sign
that traces
Liu Xiaobo is one of the 50 symbolic cases chosen for inclusion in ‘Beyond Bars: 50 Years of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee‘, a special issue of Index on Censorship (issue 04/2010) produced in partnership with English PEN to mark the 50th anniversary of the WiPC (pp 221-222).
For more information on Liu Xiaobo and to read some of his work, please click here on the links below:
In 2011, English PEN took part in the Worldwide Reading for Liu Xiaobo. For more information, please click here.
- Liu Xia telling the story of Chinese authorities confiscating Liu Xiaobo’s work, recorded in Beijing, March 2010
- A reading of “Greed’s Prisoner,” recorded in Beijing, March 2010
- Liu Xiaobo on freedom of expression in China, 2006
- Writers Rally for Liu Xiaobo, New York, December 31, 2010
- “Words a Cell Can’t Hold,” translated by Jeffrey Yang in The New York Times
- “You Wait for Me with Dust”, translated by Zheng Danyi, Shirley Lee and Martin Alexander in the Asia Literary Review.
For more multimedia, Liu’s poetry, and continued updates on his case please visit: www.pen.org/nobel
News stories:
Wife of jailed Chinese Nobel peace prize laureate ‘is a hostage’ (The Guardian, 20 February 2011)
Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo’s wife missing, as couple’s home vanishes too (The Guardian, 10 December 2010)
Liu Xiaobo – a democratic hero forged in the fire of Tiananmen Square (The Guardian, 9 December 2010)
Chinese Twitter user seized after supporting Liu Xiaobo (The Guardian, 26 October 2010)
Chinese activists urge Beijing to release Liu Xiaobo (The Guardian, 15 October 2010)
UN panel calls for Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s release (The BBC, 2 August 2011)
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/honorarymembers/china/liuxiaobo/
