Dilip Simeon's blog

You want to bury him bury into the dirt but you forget he is a seed (anonymous message from someone in China) Liu Xiaobo cremated in 'private ceremony', amid fears for wife's safety The Nobel laureate and democracy icon  Liu Xiaobo  has been cremated in north-eastern China, Chinese authorities have announced, amid growing fears for the safety of his wife, Liu Xia.  The veteran dissident died on Thursday, aged 61 , becoming the first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since the 1935 recipient, German pacifist  Carl von Ossietzky , died under surveillance after years confined to Nazi concentration camps. Speaking at a press conference in the city of Shenyang, where Liu died, government spokesperson Zhang Qingyang said his cremation had taken place at a local funeral parlour following a “short mourning service” early on Saturday morning.  Funeral ceremony for Liu Xiaobo. Photo: Shenyang government/Supplied China’s N...

NB: The Chinese Communists have converted their Constitution into a cruel joke. Let anyone read it and compare it with the reality - especially the manner in which they assassinated  Liu Xiaobo and are now torturing his widow. Here's Article 35 of their Constitution - Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration ." Other sections also bear reading..This is a shameless tyranny. DS Get out! Chinese agents bar access to the 'free' wife of Liu Xiaobo Chinese authorities claim Liu Xia is a free woman. But one week after  the death of her husband , the Nobel laureate and democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, a visit to the couple’s Beijing home immediately gives the lie to that claim. Within seconds of arriving at the tree-lined property on Wednesday, the Guardian was surrounded by plain-clothes security agents, shouting orders and questions, demanding that its reporters...

NB:  More evidence of the unspeakable tyranny of the  leadership of the  Chinese Communist Party. So terrified are they of the truth they will torture a completely innocent woman whose only crime is to have been married to Liu Xiaobo, a brave man done to death for asking China's rulers to respect their own constitution. Liu Xia ha s 'never been suspected, charged or convicted of a crime, but has lived in a prison for eight years' .  This is what remains of the human conscience after the CPC has finished with it. Her continued imprisonment is a crying shame and an abomination.  DS Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, has said she is ready to die in protest at being held under  house arrest  in China for more than seven years. “Now, I’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home. Xiaobo is gone, and there’s nothing in the world for me now. It’s easier to die than live. Using death to defy could not be any simple...

NB: We may wonder why a super-power armed with nuclear weapons is so scared of free minds. DS More than 50 prominent international authors have written a letter to Chinese president Xi Jinping urging him to free Liu Xia, the wife of deceased Nobel Peace Prize laureate  Liu Xiaobo .  The letter , signed by Chimamanda Adichie, Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Tom Stoppard and George Saunders, appealed to Xi’s “conscience” and “sense of compassion” to release Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since 2010 despite never being accused of any crime.  “We urge you to lift all remaining restrictions against Liu Xia, and to ensure her freedom of speech, her freedom to meet with others, and her freedom to travel,” the joint letter said. “Liu Xia has undergone great suffering for many years, simply for being the wife of a man that China has deemed to be a dissident. “She is in poor health, she is isolated from those who care for her, and she is grieving deeply for the ...

After more than two years of house arrest and government-imposed silence, the wife of China's imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo on Thursday talked to reporters who snuck in to see her during an apparent lunch break by the guards watching her apartment.  In her first interview since 2010, Liu Xia described her husband's imprisonment and her house arrest to journalists from the Associated Press as Kafkaesque. "I really never imagined that after he won I would not be able to leave my home," she said, describing her new life, which is restricted to an apartment with no Internet, phone or trips outside, except to buy groceries and visit her parents. "This is too absurd."  Her comments come days ahead of the two-year anniversary of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, at which his absence was symbolized with an empty chair, and as the Chinese government celebrates the country's only other native Nobel laureate living there, ...

NB : The Chinese Communist Party should hang its head in shame at this brutal judicial murder of one of China's gentlest and kindest souls, whose only crime was that he wanted freedom and democracy for the Chinese people and had the temerity to demand a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. In fact he was punished for asking the Chinese government to implement its own Constitution, under which - Article 35 - China's citizens enjoy “freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration” .  It is an indication of the brittle nature of totalitarianism that it so fears the power of the human mind that it can sentence political dissidents to a living hell rather than allow them to speak freely. Communists and socialists the world over should reflect on how much their campaigns for democratic rights are compromised by association with such criminal dictators as are ruling the so-called People Republic.  Rest in Peace Liu Xiaobo . Democrats the...

Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was  published  in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. It is not the first time he has stirred up controversy in China. Yu first gained fame in 1998 at age twenty-five for his book  Fire and Ice , a series of biting, satirical essays on contemporary society. Within two years, he was already  blacklisted  by most publishers. An intensely moralistic person, he also angered many Chinese intellectuals for arguing that they failed to match actions to words.  In 2003, Yu   converted to Christianity   and increasingly complemented his provocative writing with political activism of his own. He was an early signer of  Charter 08 , the landmark human rights manifesto, and in 2010 cemented his position as a leading political critic by writing a biography of Chi...

A Tibetan language activist who appeared in a New York Times video has been put on trial for separatism in proceedings dismissed as a “sham” by rights groups, a sign of increasingly hardline attitudes towards government critics. Tashi Wangchuk pleaded not guilty to the charges of “inciting separatism” during the four-hour trial in the western Chinese city of Yushu, where the state’s main piece of evidence against him was the nine-minute video, according to his lawyer, Liang Xiaojun. The activist was detained two years ago after appearing in the video where he criticised policies towards Tibetan language education, attempted to sue the local government and tried to entice China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, to report on his concerns. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, and the judge said he would deliver a verdict at a later date. China’s Communist party-controlled courts have a conviction rate of more than 99%. Tashi had advocated for greater use of Tibetan in edu...

NB : The Chinese Communist Party has established a tyranny over its citizens. It brutally punishes those who call for democracy and for adherence to its own constitution . Its cruelty towards the brave individuals who insist on the freedom of conscience is an indicator of totalitarianism; and the Partys' fear of truthful speech. The treatment of Liu is a barbarity that must be condemned. It is hard to believe that the wife of a dying man and he himself could be such a threat to the Chinese super-power that even their brief meeting would need to be so severely curtailed: " In the past three years, Liu Xia has not been allowed to deliver her letters to her husband when visiting him. Liu Xiaobo used to be able to receive his wife's letters from his lawyers through her younger brother Liu Hui. Now, the prison simply returns the unread letters to her. During the past three months, his lawyer has even been refused visits with him."  All those who stand for democracy and h...