Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai condemned China’s treatment of her fellow peace prize-winner Liu Xiaobo following his death of liver cancer in custody last
ABUJA – Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai condemned China’s treatment of her fellow peace prize-winner Liu Xiaobo following his death of liver cancer in custody last week.
Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms in China.
Liu’s incarceration meant he was unable to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and he became the second winner of it to die in state custody, the first being Carl von Ossietzky in Germany in 1938. Liu’s widow, Liu Xia, remains under effective house arrest.
“I condemn any government who denies people’s freedom, ” Yousafzai, 20, a Pakistani education activist who came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head in 2012, told Reuters at a school in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
“I’ m hoping that people will learn from what he (Liu) did and join together and fight for freedom, fight for people’s rights and fight for equality, ” she said.
