Condolence: Liu Xiaobo, China’s most prominent human rights warrior dies

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Mr Liu Xiaobo the imprisoned Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, passed away on Thursday night.
Mr Liu Xiaobo the imprisoned Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, passed away on Thursday night.

Tibetan Review mourns demise of Liu Xiaobo, the courageous fighter for human rights and freedom of expression. He was a man of principle, fierce intellect and a humble human being who always stood for humanity.

Liu Xiaobo

Mr Liu Xiaobo the imprisoned Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, passed away on Thursday night in the northeastern city of Shenyang following a battle with liver cancer at 11.45 pm.

Who is Liu Xiaobo?

Liu Xiaobo played an important role in the Tiananmen Square student protests of June 1989. He and other activists negotiated the safe exit of several hundred demonstrators, and have been credited with saving the protesters’ lives.

A university professor turned tireless rights campaigner, Mr Liu was branded a criminal by authorities.

He was later placed in a detention centre and released in 1991.

Mr Liu’s campaign to free those detained during Tiananmen landed him in a labour camp in north-eastern China for three years. He married poet Liu Xia in 1996.

He was later freed, and continued to campaign for democracy.

The 11-year jail term he was serving when he died was handed down in 2009 after he compiled, with other intellectuals, the Charter 08 manifesto.

The Charter 08 called for an end to one-party rule and the introduction of multi-party democracy in China. Mr Liu was convicted by the state for trying to overthrow the state.

Mr Liu was a pro-democracy symbol for activists outside China.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”, however he was not allowed by the Chinese government to visit Norway to accept it.

He was the second person to receive the award while in prison – the other was the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who won in 1935 while incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp.

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