Honoring Liu Xiaobo

"But I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed 20 years ago in my hunger strike declaration – I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. While I'm unable to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your professions and personalities. This includes the prosecution at present: I was aware of your respect and sincerity in your interrogation of me on 3 December.

For hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy. 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.

I firmly believe that China's political progress will never stop, and I'm full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom. China will eventually become a country of the rule of law in which human rights are supreme. I'm also looking forward to such progress being reflected in the trial of this case, and look forward to the full court's just verdict – one that can stand the test of history.

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I'd say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, my sweetheart, that I'm confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one.

Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough to hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, my sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens' speeches are treated the same; where different values, ideas, beliefs, political views ... both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; where, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; where all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; [where] all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent.

I hope to be the last victim of China's endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.

I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints." 

Liu Xiaobo's statement, given in his trial on 23 Dec, 2009. Source.

OSLO, Norway – Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for using nonviolence to demand fundamental human rights in his homeland. The award ignited a furious response from China, which accused the Norwegian Nobel Committee of violating its own principles by honoring "a criminal."

Chinese state media immediately blacked out the news and Chinese government censors blocked Nobel Prize reports from Internet websites. China declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway — and the Nordic country responded that was a petty thing for a world power to do.

This year's peace prize followed a long tradition of honoring dissidents around the world and was the first Nobel for China's dissident community since it resurfaced after the Communists launched economic but not political reforms three decades ago.

Liu, 54, was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for subversion. The Nobel committee said he was the first to be honored while still in prison, although other Nobel winners have been under house arrest or imprisoned before the prize.

Other dissidents to win the peace prize include German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.

The Nobel committee praised Liu's pacifist approach, ignoring threats by Chinese diplomats even before the announcement that such a decision would result in strained ties with Norway. Liu has been an ardent advocate for peaceful, gradual political change rather than confrontation with the government, unlike others in China's highly fractured and persecuted dissident community.

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Every day the road is new..

Many times, as I’m on the way to work, riding a bus and walking through the same streets day by day, I feel deeply at peace and in a blissful state. At home in this perpetual movement, I feel a tremendously satisfying unity with everything and everyone that passes through and by. 

At other times that connectedness grows to a level of being too sensitive to it all. Suddenly overwhelmed by the energies of every random stranger that passes me by, I am tossed from feeling their sadness, their bitterness, their anger, their grief, guilt- in a rapid movement I feel thrown through the emotional suffering of person after person, it is not an easy experience to go through at all. The most heart-breaking moment of it is when it settles from feeling each person to feeling the whole over-all energy of all the people that I pass- it is always one of hopelessness, tiredness, loneliness, loss- this is the generic background feeling from each of my intuitive moments. Its an empty feeling. It is a cold place. And I have to hold myself back from shouting out loud- you are alive, each and every one of you miracle beings, wonderful life-seeds- you are blessed with life, with this wonderful planet! It’s a gift. 

But I don’t.

Cause I know that it’s a game that everybody has chosen to play.

And then there are those other times. The times when I myself am playing the game. When I walk as if on an alien planet. When I feel alone myself, the odd one out, the one who just doesn’t fit. This is a curse for all of us spiritual beings I know, it is a hard experience to live within a majority who does not understand, yet anyway. What I feel though is that this same sensitivity and the life-path of aspiring towards being full-fledged human spirit has to bare this cross, in fact it is part of our growth. We would not have the inner inclination to walk our own way, no matter the loneliness of that path, UNLESS we also had the strength to be ok with that. We are never given more than we can handle.

Its always the same road that I take to work. And every day the the road is new. Cause it is we who are in movement. It is a wave through ease and difficulty. But let the light on the path grow through all the waving. It will, even if you seem to be pulled and pushed, back and forth, day by day you take a tiny step towards the light, even if for the moment that truth is blocked, and thats all that is needed.