About 200 mainland intellectuals and activists have issued and signed an open letter urging Beijing to release Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and seize this as a new chance to embrace democracy peacefully.
The letter, drafted in Chinese, English, French and Japanese and posted on websites hosted outside the mainland, called the imprisoned dissident a 'splendid choice', saying that the prize recognised his beliefs in advancing human rights causes and the peaceful fight against social injustice.
'We're calling upon Chinese authorities to respond to the peace prize with rationality and realism, and to take stock of warm responses from home and abroad to gain clear understanding of the world's opinion and where people have placed their hearts,' the letter stated.
Xu Youyu, one of the four drafters of the letter, said last night that about 200 had signed it and that the number was likely to rise.
'We simply want to express how we feel about the award in general, and we are hopeful that it [the open letter] could make a difference,' said Xu, a philosophy professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Another signatory, Mo Zhixu, a freelance writer, said he supported Liu not because he was the peace prize winner but because the campaigner should never have been jailed.