The Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, in His Own Words

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-china-nobel-writings.html

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HONG KONG — The Chinese government tried to silence Liu Xiaobo by banning the publication of his writing, barring him from public speaking and locking him behind bars. But much of his work has been published overseas. It reveals Mr. Liu as a staunch advocate of democratic change in China who could be harshly critical of the country’s political authorities, some of its more celebrated writers and even, at times, himself.

Mr. Liu, who died Thursday, was a passionate and acerbic lecturer and literary critic in Beijing in the 1980s. He emerged as an influential figure in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. On June 2, two days before the military crushed the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Mr. Liu and three friends began a hunger strike. They declared:

Mr. Liu was the primary force behind the Charter 08 manifesto, which called for political changes to democratize China. The document, which was initially signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals, led to his arrest in December 2008. On Dec. 25, 2009, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” Charter 08 read, in part:

During his trial, Mr. Liu defended Charter 08, saying it accurately described events such as the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s, the Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown of June 3-4, 1989.

In 2010, Mr. Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When he learned the news during a prison visit from his wife, Liu Xia, he cried and dedicated the prize to the people killed during the 1989 military crackdown. Mr. Liu was credited with saving many lives when he helped negotiate a retreat of protesters as soldiers advanced on Tiananmen Square. The bloodshed of the crackdown, in which hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed, gave him a profound focus and a lasting sense of guilt, something he addressed in an essay in 2003:

Chinese state news outlets criticized Mr. Liu, particularly after the Nobel Prize, for his previous writings and interviews that praised the West over China. In one oft-quoted passage from a 1988 interview with Open Magazine in Hong Kong, then a British colony, he said that since the city had progressed so much during 100 years of British rule, China would “need 300 years of colonialism” to catch up. But in later work he expressed second thoughts. In the epilogue to his 1990 book “Chinese Politics and China’s Modern Intellectuals,” he wrote:

Because Mr. Liu remained in prison after he was selected for the Nobel in 2010, he was represented at the award ceremony by an empty chair. His lecture, which was read by the Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann, was the statement he had prepared for his 2009 trial. “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement” describes Mr. Liu’s love for his wife, Liu Xia, his lack of enmity toward the police and prosecutors who put him behind bars, and his hopes for political liberalization in China: