Chinese evade censors to express sorrow, anger over plight of Liu Xiaobo
Jailed political activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner is suffering from terminal cancer, but chances of him receiving treatment abroad under medical parole appear slim
Chinese social media users have circumvented government censors to express grief and anger over the plight of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who has terminal cancer amid dimming hopes that he may be allowed out of China to receive treatment abroad.
The political activist was serving an 11-year jail sentence for inciting subversion, but was given medical parole after he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He is now receiving treatment at a hospital in Shenyang in Liaoning province.
Direct mentions of Liu – a long-time political activist and writer – and to his wife, Liu Xia, appear to have been mainly erased from China’s social media sites, but some posts have managed to slip past the censors.
“Although hope is slim, seeing that he has not been abandoned or forgotten by the world – this is also a form of comfort,” one person wrote on Monday.
Another said: “Want his wife to enjoy a stable old age and to live to the end of her days with dignity. Really want to support them, but can’t do anything.”
Liu was diagnosed in May with late-stage liver cancer.
He was jailed in 2009 as one of the authors of “Charter 08”, a manifesto calling for democracy and sweeping political reform in China. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, but was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony.
Only indirect mentions of Liu and his wife have been visible on Chinese social media.
A handful of the posts referred to the final statement he penned for his December 2009 trial.
“I have no enemies and no hatred,” part of his statement said. “I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.”
One internet user wrote: “History will remember this person, ‘I have no enemies’.”
He Xinbu, a Beijing-based author and poet, posted a photograph of Liu and his wife last Thursday with a poem.
“Someone was in a coma before the coming of the night. When he said he had no enemies, he was still wearing the gentleness of the night, but what he found waiting for him was the violence of daylight.”
Some posts referred to Liu without using his name or any information that easily identified him. One update on his condition referred to Liu as “empty stool”, one of the code words used to describe him online, according to Jason Ng, an author and researcher on internet censorship.
Another internet user lamented that Liu was so ill that it was only right to allow him treatment overseas. “Not to mention that his own relatives said they want him to receive foreign medical treatment,” they said.
One commenter from Tianjin said looking at a photograph of Liu in hospital created pain in their heart. “He is a gift given to our nation from heaven, but we don’t know how to cherish him and now heaven is going to take him back,” they wrote. “With his passing, the last hope for peaceful change in this country is slim and essentially shattered.”
Other messages were simpler, with one expressing a single wish: “For his wife to be free”.
