Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a prominent Chinese dissident who was sentenced to 11 years in jail by a Beijing court on Friday, said last year that he dreamed China could develop a democratic system similar to that in Taiwan.
Liu, who had been detained since December last year, was given the jail term on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” a vague term that China uses to prosecute its dissidents.
In interviews before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Liu said he was very interested in Taiwan’s recent democratic development and that it could serve as “enlightenment or a model” for China.
“I’m very curious about what the younger generation in Taiwan has been thinking and doing, as this is an important indicator of the direction in which Taiwan will move,” he said.
Liu, who has been jailed several times as a political prisoner since 1989, has never shown any sign of cynicism or resentment, unlike many other persecuted Chinese dissidents.
“I know what I have been doing and what kind of cost I have to pay for that,” he told reporters in his small home in Beijing.
On the contrary, he expressed a great deal of tolerance toward the policemen who arrested him.
“The men who nabbed me are probably good fathers when they have their uniforms off at home,” Liu said.
Although Liu was 53 years old at the time, he said he and his wife had decided not to have a child.
“We are not against having a child, but rather we don’t dare have one, as human rights are never respected in China nowadays, so we have ‘a hundred reasons’ not to have one,” he said.
Liu was arrested last December on the eve of the release of “Charter 08,” a blueprint Liu co-authored with about 300 intellectuals across all spectrums of Chinese society that calls for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dominance of the government, military and courts, protection of freedom of speech and religious beliefs and implementation of constitutional democracy.
“Charter 08” is reported to have been signed by more than 10,000 people so far, many of whom are leading intellectuals in China.
In 1989, Liu cut short a visiting scholar program at Columbia University in the US to return to Beijing and join the hunger strike at Tiananmen Square that led to the bloody military crackdown known as the Tiananmen Massacre.
He was then detained at Qincheng Prison near Beijing on charges of “anti-revolution” for his role in the incident.
After his release in January 1991, Liu refused to go into exile and instead chose to stay at home to promote democratization. He was jailed again in May 1994 for more than six months for his appeals for justice for the victims of the 1989 massacre.
In October 1996, Liu was sent to a labor camp in Liaoning Province for three years after he advised a CCP congress session to launch a national anti-corruption drive.
His insistence on human rights and democracy has earned him numerous awards from Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders and other international organizations.
Liu’s latest sentence triggered outcry from international human rights organizations and Western countries, with the US pressing Beijing for his immediate release.
On Saturday President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) called on China to demonstrate “the greatest possible tolerance” toward its dissidents.
Human Rights Watch said that since 2003, China has sentenced more than 35 people on charges of inciting subversion of state power to prison terms ranging from one-and-a-half to 11 years, with Liu being the most severely punished.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS