Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner is incurably ill

According to the Society for Threatened Peoples, the fact that the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has been set free is not to be seen as a sign that China’s leaders have become more tolerant or open towards criticism. “For years, we have been observing that China tends to release seriously ill prisoners and political prisoners who were tortured, so that they die at home and not in police custody. With Tibetan prisoners, for example, this is common practice. The Chinese authorities are trying to keep face and to avoid allegations that the deaths are due to the living conditions in the prisons or a consequence of being tortured,” the Göttingen-based human rights organization warned on Monday.

According to his lawyer, Liu is incurably ill. Shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer, he was released for medical reasons. Liu Xiaobo had tried to advocate for the democratization of his country. At the end of 2009, he was sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment for “incitement against the government and the socialist system” – and his wife and his colleagues were kept under surveillance, threatened, or placed under house arrest by the authorities. Since then, the STP has been demanding Liu Xiaobo’s immediate release and an end to the harassment against his wife and his supporters.

Header Photo: STP's archive