Despite being one of China’s most famous political dissidents, Liu Xiaobo rarely struck those who knew him as a firebrand.
Liu died of liver cancer on July 13 at a hospital in Shenyang in northeastern China. He was 61.
He was granted medical parole in June after receiving his diagnosis in prison, but the Beijing government would not let him seek treatment abroad despite Liu’s wishes and international pressure.
Unwitting martyr
Many of his friends and supporters said at the time of his release that they feared the dissident was close to death — made a martyr by the Communist authorities.
“Whether it was gross negligence or political murder, they have committed an unprecedented crime as no other government of the world had ever seen a Nobel Peace Prize laureate die in its custody, ” said Hu Jia, a leading Chinese human rights activist, when Liu first left jail.
Hu has known Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, for years and served prison terms for his own advocacy.
Liu was first jailed for his role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement after the bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square — and later for petitioning for political reform and co-writing a paper on policy toward Taiwan that was at odds with the government stance.
His most recent conviction, in December 2009, stemmed from his co-authorship of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for political reform and human rights in China. He received a surprisingly harsh 11-year prison term for “inciting subversion of state power.”
In October 2010, while serving his sentence at Jinzhou Prison, near Shenyang, Liu was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
Liu’s wife tweeted at the time that, upon hearing the news from her during a prison visit, her husband started to cry and said: “This is for the martyrs of Tiananmen Square.”
“His continued effort throughout these 20 years has not changed society, but he’s influenced a lot of people, ” Liu Xia, who married Liu Xiaobo in 1996 while he was serving an earlier prison sentence, told CNN in 2009.
