Liu Xiaobo
Authors urge China to release Nobel prize winner on seventh anniversary of his arrest
Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."
The aura around me is enough already. I hope the world can pay more attention to other victims who are not well known, or not known at all.
Liu Xiaobo, a prominent independent intellectual in China, was a long-time advocate of political reform and human rights in China and an outspoken critic of the Chinese communist regime; Liu was detained, put under house arrest and imprisoned many times for his writing and activism. According to his lawyers’ defence statement in his 2009 trial, Liu had written nearly 800 essays, 499 of them since 2005. Liu was a drafter and a key proponent of the pro-democracy manifesto, Charter 08. Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, which he was unable to accept in person due to his imprisonment.
Chinese HRDs face intimidation, harassment, house arrest, abductions, torture and imprisonment. They also work under very restrictive legislation, including laws which criminalize all unauthorized demonstrations and require government sponsorship for NGO registration, which is refused to any organisation touching on human rights issues. Widescale investigations into NGOs with links to overseas organisations took place in 2014 and 2015 resulting in harassment, detentions and forced closures.
