Struck by liver cancer, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo dies at 61
13 July 2017 5:05 PM GMT
During a hunger strike days before the Chinese army crushed the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement on June 4, 1989, the man who would become China's best known dissident, Liu Xiaobo, declared: "We have no enemies."
When being tried in 2009 on charges of inciting subversion of state power for helping write Charter 08 - a pro-democracy manifesto calling for an end to one-party rule - Liu reaffirmed: "I have no enemies and no hatred."
He was sentenced to 11 years in prison that same year, drawing protests from the United States, many European governments and rights groups, which condemned the stiff sentence and called for his early release.
Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Liu, 61, died on Thursday of multiple organ failure, the government of the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang said.
He was being treated in a hospital there, having been admitted in June after being diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. His wife, Liu Xia, had told Reuters previously that her husband wanted to dedicate the Nobel prize to those who died in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
"He said this prize should go to all the victims of June 4," Liu Xia said, after she was allowed to visit him in jail following the announcement of the prize.
"He felt sad, quite upset. He cried. He felt it was hard to deal with." Liu Xia had been living under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel prize, but had been allowed to visit him in prison about once a month. She suffers from depression.
She was allowed to be with him in the hospital where he spent his last days.
Liu had been a thorn in Beijing's side since 1989, when he helped negotiate a deal to allow protesters to leave Tiananmen Square before troops and tanks rolled in.
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