China\u2019s most famous political prisoner, the Nobel laureate and democracy icon\u00a0Liu Xiaobo, has died at the age of 61.<\/p>\n
The Chinese intellectual and activist, who\u00a0championed non-violent resistance\u00a0as a way of overcoming \u201cforceful tyranny\u201d, is the first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist\u00a0Carl von Ossietzky, the 1935 recipient, who died under surveillance after years confined to Nazi concentration camps.<\/p>\n
Liu was\u00a0diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer\u00a0in May, while serving an\u00a011-year sentence\u00a0for his involvement in a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08 that called for an end to China\u2019s one-party rule.<\/p>\n
Last month he was granted medical parole and moved to a hospital in northeastern\u00a0China, where he was reportedly treated in an isolated ward under armed guard.<\/p>\n
World leaders,\u00a0including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Taiwan\u2019s president, Tsai Ing-wen, had urged China to allow the dying dissident to travel overseas to receive medical care that supporters claimed could have prolonged his life. But China refused, prompting criticism that its Communist party\u2019s leaders were wilfully and intentionally shortening the dissident\u2019s life in order to deny him one last opportunity to denounce their rule.<\/p>\n
On Thursday night authorities in the northeastern city of Shenyang, where he was being treated, confirmed his death in a short statement.<\/p>\n
News of Liu\u2019s death sparked an immediate outpouring of grief and condemnation of the way he had been treated. Liu\u2019s peaceful activism and biting criticism of one-party rule meant he had spent almost a quarter of his life behind bars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is so hard. I don\u2019t know if I can say anything,\u201d said Tienchi Martin-Liao, a longtime friend, breaking down in tears as she learned of Liu Xiaobo\u2019s death
\n\u201cI hate this government\u2026 I am furious and lots of people share my feeling. It is not only sadness \u2013 it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this? I don\u2019t have the words to describe it.
\n\u201cThis is unbearable. This will go down in history. No-one should forgot what this government and the Xi Jinping administration has done. It is unforgivable. It is really unforgivable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLiu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead,\u201d said Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the\u00a0Beijing Spring. \u201cLiu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrick Poon, an Amnesty International campaigner who also knew Liu, hit out at Beijing\u2019s \u201cincomprehensible\u201d persecution of someone he remembered as a kind and principled man: \u201cHe represents the sad reality of being a political dissident in China \u2026 We will definitely remember him for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eva Pils, an expert in Chinese law and human rights from King\u2019s College London, said that while Beijing bristled at comparisons between Liu and Ossietzky, \u201cin a way, unfortunately, this ending reinforces that comparison \u2013 because effectively they have just let him die in their care\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pils added: \u201cIt\u2019s a grim ending.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hu said his friend\u2019s plight highlighted the bleak realities facing activists living under President Xi Jinping, who has presided over what observers call\u00a0the most severe political chill\u00a0since the days following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the situation in China now is deteriorating \u2013 and the way in which Liu has been treated clearly shows us what the current situation is, and how it goes beyond our imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in the northern province of Jilin in 1955, Liu was part of the first generation of Chinese students to go to university after they reopened following the upheaval of\u00a0Mao Zedong\u2019s Cultural Revolution. He studied Chinese literature and went on to become a revered writer and public intellectual.<\/p>\n
When pro-democracy protests broke out in Beijing in the spring of 1989, Liu was lecturing in New York but decided to return despite having previously shown little interest in politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe thought: \u2018This is where I should be and this is where I can make a contribution. So I am going there\u2019,\u201d said Perry Link, a Chinese literature expert from the University of California, Riverside, who knew him.<\/p>\n
Liu flew back to Beijing and headed to Tiananmen Square, where he played a central role in the protests. He led a hunger strike shortly before the 4 June military crackdown in which hundreds, possibly thousands of lives were lost. He was jailed for almost two years for his role in what Beijing called \u201ccounter-revolutionary\u201d riots. The experience served as a political awakening that transformed Liu into a lifelong activist and champion of democracy.<\/p>\n
Over the coming years Liu continued to speak out, despite two more stints behind bars, railing incessantly against China\u2019s authoritarian regime in\u00a0essays\u00a0and\u00a0interviews. Link described Liu as a \u201cGandhian type\u201d who was committed to peaceful resistance but who wrote \u201cwith clearly no fear of what might befall him\u201d.<\/p>\n
He was also a serious intellect. Link said he had been \u201csmitten by the range\u201d of topics covered in his friend\u2019s texts, which covered everything from Chinese humour, to the history of sex, Confucian philosophy, Olympic gold medals, Obama\u2019s first election and even poems about St Augustine and Emanuel Kant.<\/p>\n
The \u201ccrime\u201d that lead to Liu spending his final years behind bars was\u00a0Charter 08, a 2008 declaration inspired by Charter 77, a manifesto published by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977. \u201cThe current system has become backward to the point that change cannot be avoided,\u201d it warned, calling for an end to one-party rule.<\/p>\n