TO CHINA’s authorities, Liu Xiaobo was a common criminal who had been sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”. In fact Mr Liu was no more common than he was a criminal. The only previous Nobel peace laureate to die upon release from prison was Carl von Ossietzky, who was awarded the prize in 1935 while in a Nazi concentration camp and succumbed to consumption. China’s equivalent of the Gestapo might not appreciate this parallel.
In a narrow sense of the term, however, Mr Liu was tragically all too common. He was the best-known of many hundreds of prisoners of conscience in China—people serving time for their political or religious beliefs. Mr Liu’s long ordeal is a reminder of what the Chinese state does to those who challenge it.
Secrecy, says Nicholas Bequelin of Amnesty International, an NGO, is paramount in China’s handling of dissidents: the government...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2uiq6F9
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