Word: liu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...with reporting by Ling Woo Liu...
...verdict was completely outrageous," says Liu's wife, Liu Xia. "I have nothing to say to this unreasonable government." She was allowed to attend the sentencing Friday with her brother (she had been barred from attending the trial on Wednesday). Liu Xia said she spoke briefly with her husband after the sentencing about family matters. She says that he was composed throughout the hearing. She expects he will appeal the verdict, but no decision has been made...
...Liu, 53, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University when the Tiananmen Square demonstrations gripped China in the summer of 1989. He returned home to join student hunger strikers, and was jailed for 20 months after the government's bloody crackdown. He was later sentenced to three years in a labor camp beginning in 1996 for further questioning China's one-party system. Along with Hu Jia, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on a subversion charge in 2008, Liu was one of the most prominent dissidents active in mainland China...
...Liu's conviction and sentencing, say human rights groups, is evidence that beneath China's pretensions of modernity is the old, intolerant authoritarianism, albeit gussied up with legalisms. "The Chinese government's decision to sentence Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison on subversion charges is a travesty of justice and reflects yet again the government's willingness to use the law as a weapon to silence dissent," Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote after the verdict. "The severity of Liu's sentence puts the lie to the government's lofty rhetoric...
...rulers of China may not commemorate Christmas and may have cynically picked the day to pass judgment on Liu to avoid Western media attention. But they may have given the people they wish to silence a new code word for anger. In the Twitterverse, Chinese language tweets have now paired Liu's fate and shengdan, the Chinese words for the birthday of Christ. From now on, Christmas will have a separate meaning for dissidents in China. It will be their day to commemorate Liu Xiaobo...