Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo (born December 28, 1955, Changchun, Jilin province, China—died July 13, 2017, Shenyang, Liaoning province, China) was a Chinese literary critic, professor, and human rights activist who called for democratic reforms and the end of one-party rule in China. In 2010 he became the first Chinese citizen to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Liu graduated from Jilin University in 1982, and he continued his studies at Beijing Normal University, earning a Ph.D. in 1988. By then Liu had already established himself as a prolific and erudite critic, rising to prominence in 1986 with a stinging examination of modern Chinese literature. He undertook a lecture tour of Norway and the United States in 1988–89, returning to Beijing as the pro-democracy movement in that city began to gather strength.

In the days leading up to the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, Liu served as an adviser to the student protesters, and he joined protest leaders in a weeklong hunger strike. After the Chinese military forcibly cleared the square on the night of June 3–4, Liu went into hiding. He was arrested on June 6, and he spent 21 months in prison for his role in the protests. Upon his release, Liu continued his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, and he was arrested in 1996 for advocating the release of those still imprisoned as a result of the Tiananmen Square protests. He spent the next three years in a labour camp.

In 2008 Liu helped draft “Charter 08,” a 19-point program that called for greater political freedoms in China and concluded with the signatures of more than 300 academics and intellectuals. Liu was arrested hours before the document’s release onto the Internet, and, at a trial the following year, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, but neither Liu nor any member of his family was permitted to attend the ceremony in December of that year. In his absence, Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann read a statement that Liu had made to a Chinese court the previous year. It read, in part, “I have no enemies and no hatred. Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation’s progress toward freedom and democracy.”

In May 2017 Liu was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, and the following month he was granted a medical parole from prison to seek treatment. He remained under armed guard during his subsequent hospitalization, and in July 2017 Liu became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in state custody since 1935 recipient Carl von Ossietzky.