After eight years of suffering in prison, Liu Xiaobo was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. This has caused widespread concerns once the news was announced. According to senior doctors, he may have half a year to live if he can get targeted therapy.

According to Ming Po, dated 27 June, during the student movement of 1989, he joined hunger strike for three days, and he successfully negotiated with the student leaders and the army commander to let all the several thousand students withdraw peacefully from the Tiananmen Square. In 1991, he was convicted for the offense of “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” but exempted from criminal punishment for his “major meritorious action”for having avoided the possible bloody confrontation in Tiananmen Square.

In 1996, he was ordered to serve three years of re-education through labor “for disturbing public order”. In the same year, at the labor camp, he married Liu Xia. After his release, he resumed his freelance writing. In 2008, Liu was detained due to his participation with the Charter08 Manifesto. Then he was formally arrested on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power” and was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment in Mianzhou Prison, Liaoning Province. What Liu has done is to exercise his rights of freedom of speech, but was wrongfully sentenced to prison and now dying. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, showing that he has already obtained sympathy and support within and outside the country.

Liu should not have been sentenced to prison because of his speech. He then suffered seriously and is dying. He should be freed unconditionally, rather than to be granted medical parole. This is a very urgent call to free him. Otherwise, the Chinese authorities should be charged of intentional murder and to be condemned by history.

Actually, Liu Xia asked for medical report from the hospital but was rejected. She also repeatedly asked for overseas treatment but rejected again and again. Due to his deteriorating health which could not afford chemical treatment, he was then sent to hospital. However, he got the terminal liver cancer which cannot be cured in the country, and worse still, he cannot be allowed to go abroad. It obviously shows that the authorities have an intention to murder him.

The brutality and savagery of the Chinese authorities has already outraged the public inside and outside the country. There is widespread call for an unconditional release of Liu Xiaobo and letting him go abroad for medical treatment. Whether the CCP and the government make compromise largely depends on the development of public pressure.

29 June 2017