FREEDOM FOR LIU XIAOBO !

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day.
In Berlin, Nobel Literature Prize laureate Herta Müller joined in a demonstration at the Chinese Embassy for human rights and especially to free the Chinese author and Nobel Peace Prize winner LIU XIAOBO.
Also yesterday, Nobel Prize laureates around the world called for the release of LIU XIAOBO from the prison in China in which he has been held since 2009 for an eleven-year sentence. This call was made on the eve of the presentation of this years Nobel Prizes in Oslo and Stockholm.

Do not forget

LIU XIAOBO !

Free

LIU XIAOBO !

Freedom of expression and opinion, free access to information, freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. LIU XIAOBO's "crime" in China was to demand nothing more than this in the Charta '08 for the respect of the rights "guaranteed" in the Chinese constitution.

LIU XIAOBO

must be set free.

Liu Xiaobo's poem from prison:

Your Lifelong Prisoner

To Xia

My dear,
I'll never give up the struggle for freedom from the oppressors'
jail, but I'll be your willing prisoner for life.

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
I want to live in your dark insides
surviving on the dregs in your blood

inspired by the flow of your estrogen

I hear your constant heartbeat
drop by drop, like melted snow from a mountain stream
if I were a stubborn, million-year rock
you'd bore right through me
drop by drop
day and night

Inside you
I grope in the dark
and use the wine you've drunk
to write poems looking for you
I plead like a deaf man begging for sound
Let the dance of love intoxicate your body

I always feel
your lungs rise and fall when you smoke
in an amazing rhythm
you exhale my toxins
I inhale fresh air to nourish my soul

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
like a baby loath to be born
clinging to your warm uterus
you provide all my oxygen
all my serenity

A baby prisoner
in the depths of your being
unafraid of alcohol and nicotine
the poisons of your loneliness
I need your poisons
need them too much

Maybe as your prisoner
I'll never see the light of day
but I believe
darkness is my destiny
inside you
all is well

The glitter of the outside world
scares me
exhausts me
I focus on
your darkness –
simple and impenetrable

-Harvard University Press from No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems by Xiaobo Liu. Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.