Officials say China’s most prominent political prisoner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, has died. He was 61.

Liu had been hospitalized for advanced liver cancer diagnosed in prison in May. The judicial bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang said Thursday he died of multiple organ failure.

His supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.

Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.</s>SHENYANG, China — Imprisoned for all the seven years since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo never renounced the pursuit of human rights in China, insisting on living a life of “honesty, responsibility and dignity.” China’s most prominent political prisoner died Thursday of liver cancer at 61.

His death — at a hospital in the country’s northeast, where he’d been transferred after being diagnosed — triggered an outpouring of dismay among his friends and supporters, who lauded his courage and determination.

“There are only two words to describe how we feel right now: grief and fury,” family friend and activist Wu Yangwei, better known by his penname Ye Du, said by phone. “The only way we can grieve for Xiaobo and bring his soul some comfort is to work even harder to try to keep his influence alive.”

The 1989 pro-democracy protests centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, by Liu’s account, were the “major turning point” of his life. Liu had been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York but returned early to China in May 1989 to join the movement that was sweeping the country and which the Communist Party regarded as a grave challenge to its authority.

When the government sent troops and tanks into Beijing to quash the protests on the night of June 3-4, Liu persuaded some students to leave the square rather than face down the army. The military crackdown killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of people and heralded a more repressive era.

Liu became one of hundreds of Chinese imprisoned for crimes linked to the demonstrations. It was only the first of four imprisonments.

His final prison sentence was for co-authoring “Charter 08,” a document circulated in 2008 that called for more freedom of expression, human rights and an independent judiciary.

“What I demanded of myself was this: Whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity,” Liu wrote in “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement,” which he was prevented from reading aloud at his sentencing in 2009. He was sent to prison for 11 years on charges of inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in his country.

A year later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian committee lauded Liu’s “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

The award enraged China’s government, which condemned it as a political farce. Within days, Liu’s wife, the artist and poet Liu Xia, was put under house arrest, despite not being convicted of any crime. China also punished Norway, even though its government has no say over the independent Nobel panel’s decisions. China suspended a bilateral trade deal and restricted imports of Norwegian salmon, and relations only resumed in 2017.

Dozens of Liu’s supporters were prevented from leaving the country to accept the award on his behalf. Instead, Liu’s absence at the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, Norway, was marked by an empty chair. Another empty chair was for Liu Xia.

In recent days, supporters and foreign governments urged China to allow him to be treated for cancer abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible.

On Thursday, the Nobel Committee said Beijing bore a heavy responsibility for Liu’s death. But it also leveled harsh criticism at the “free world” for its “hesitant, belated reactions” to his serious illness and imprisonment.

“It is a sad and disturbing fact that the representatives of the free world, who themselves hold democracy and human rights in high regard, are less willing to stand up for those rights for the benefit of others,” said the organization’s chairwoman, Berit Reiss-Andersen.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Liu Xiaobo was a “courageous fighter for civil rights and freedom of opinion.” Former President George W. Bush saluted Liu as a man who “dared to dream of a China that respected human rights.” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, meanwhile, urged Beijing to release Liu’s wife from house arrest and allow her to leave the country if she wishes.

Liu was born on Dec. 28, 1955, in the northeastern city of Changchun, the son of a language and literature professor who was a committed party member. The middle child in a family of five boys, he was among the first to attend Jilin University when college entrance examinations resumed after the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

After spending nearly two years in detention following the Tiananmen crackdown, Liu was detained for the second time in 1995 after drafting a plea for political reform. Later that year, he was detained a third time after co-drafting “Opinion on Some Major Issues Concerning our Country Today.” That resulted in a three-year sentence to a labor camp, during which time he married Liu Xia.

The couple’s friends and supporters described the dissident and his soft-spoken wife as being deeply in love. In the same statement Liu had prepared for his trial, he addressed his wife.

“Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and brightness in my heart, and filling every minute of my time in prison with meaning,” he said.

“But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you.”

Yu Jie, a longtime friend and a biographer, said Liu frequently gathered a small group of friends for frequent dinners at his favorite local Sichuan hot-pot restaurant, where he regaled younger intellectuals on literature and philosophy before returning home to write until dawn, as was his habit.

“No one was as active as he was, and no one had so much social interaction with the young people,” Yu said. “He was a bridge for generations of thinkers.”

Liu was only the second Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in prison, a fact pointed to by human rights groups as an indication of the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly hard line against its critics. The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died from tuberculosis in Germany in 1938 while serving a sentence for opposing Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

“Hitler was wild and strong and thought he was right — but history proved he was wrong in imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize winner,” said Mo Shaoping, an old friend and Liu’s former lawyer. “The authorities consider Liu Xiaobo guilty, but history will prove he is not.”</s>Shenyang, China — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, China’s most prominent political prisoner, died Thursday at a hospital in the country’s northeast, officials said. He was 61.

Liu had been hospitalized for advanced liver cancer diagnosed in prison in May. In an online announcement, the judicial bureau of the city of Shenyang said he died of multiple organ failure.

Liu’s supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.

Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.

“What I demanded of myself was this: whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity,” Liu wrote in “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement,” which he had hoped to read out in court when being sentenced in 2009. He was not permitted to do so and received an 11-year prison sentence.

He came to prominence following the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which he called the “major turning point” in his life. Liu had been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York but returned early to China in May 1989 to join the movement that was sweeping the country and which the Communist Party regarded as a grave challenge to its authority.

When the Chinese government sent troops and tanks into Beijing to quash the protests on the night of June 3-4, Liu persuaded some students to leave the square rather than face down the army. The military crackdown killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of people and heralded a more repressive era.

Liu became one of hundreds of Chinese imprisoned for crimes linked to the demonstrations. It was only the first of four stays in prisons owing to his ideology.

His final prison sentence was for co-authoring “Charter 08,” a document circulated in 2008 that called for more freedom of expression, human rights and an independent judiciary in China. Although Liu wasn’t the initiator, he was a prominent force behind it and already well known to the authorities.

The sentence only increased Liu’s prominence outside of his country.

In 2010, while Liu was serving his sentence in a prison in a small city in China’s northeast, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Norwegian-based committee citing Liu’s “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

The award enraged China’s government, which condemned it as a political farce. Within days, Liu’s wife, artist and poet Liu Xia, was put under house arrest, despite not being convicted of any crime. China also punished Norway, even though its government has no say over the independent Nobel panel’s decisions. China suspended a bilateral trade deal and restricted imports of Norwegian salmon, and relations only resumed in 2017.

Dozens of Liu’s supporters were prevented from leaving the country to accept the award on Liu’s behalf. Instead, Liu’s absence at the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, Norway, was marked by an empty chair. Another empty chair was for Liu Xia.

Liu was born on Dec. 28, 1955, in the northeastern city of Changchun, the son of a language and literature professor who was a committed party member. The middle child in a family of five boys, he was among the first students to attend Jilin University when college entrance examinations resumed following the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Liu studied Chinese literature there and later moved to the capital, first as a graduate student then as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University.

After spending nearly two years in detention following the Tiananmen crackdown, Liu was detained for the second time in 1995 after drafting a plea for political reform. Later that year, he was detained a third time after co-drafting “Opinion on Some Major Issues Concerning our Country Today.” That resulted in a three-year sentence to a labor camp, during which time he married Liu Xia. He is survived by his wife and by his son from his first marriage.

Released in 1999, he joined the international literary and human rights organization PEN and continued advocating for human rights and democracy.

Liu Xia’s brother was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment over a real estate dispute which supporters said was designed to further persecute Liu Xiaobo’s family over his actions.

Two years after Liu’s Nobel prize, a Chinese writer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, to the delight of Chinese authorities. Mo Yan is not a critic of the Communist Party, and after initially evading questions from reporters, he eventually said he wished for Liu Xiaobo’s freedom.

Other Nobel laureates were more outspoken. In 2012, an appeal by 134 Nobel laureates, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called the detentions of both Lius a violation of international law and urged their immediate release. Fellow PEN members such as Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie appealed for his release in a letter June 29, after he was transferred from prison to the hospital.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>Prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo, the only Chinese citizen ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize while still residing in China, has died at age 61. Liu died Thursday while on medical parole in northeastern China's Shenyang city, where he was being treated for liver cancer. He was serving an 11-year prison sentence for trying to overthrow the government.

By the time Liu, a scholar and human rights advocate, was diagnosed in late May, his liver cancer was already in its late stages. Chinese authorities released video footage intended to show that Liu had been receiving good medical care, and they invited U.S. and German doctors to treat him. But Beijing rejected calls to allow him to seek treatment overseas.

Liu's biographer and friend, the U.S.-based dissident Yu Jie, believes that China's government had a motive to withhold or delay treatment: It feared the consequences of Liu getting out of prison alive.

In that case, Yu says, "He would [have] become a standard-bearer for China's democratization and civil society."

Liu was born in 1955 in northeast China's Changchun city, a center of heavy industry. He spent his teenage years in the countryside during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, and was admitted to college in 1977, as universities reopened following the decade of chaos.

In 1988, Liu received his doctorate in literature from Beijing Normal University, and he stayed on to work as a lecturer and literary critic.

"He was known then as a rebel, the black horse of the literary scene," says Perry Link, a China scholar at Princeton and the University of California Riverside who has translated Liu's works into English. "And he took on just about everybody else, and made fun of them and debunked them."

Yu Jie says Liu was especially good at debunking Chinese intellectuals who claimed to be liberals. "He perceptively discovered and criticized traces of the Communist Party's education and brainwashing in them," he says.

When the Tiananmen Square democracy movement broke out in 1989, Liu flew back to Beijing from New York, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University.

Along with three other protest leaders, Liu led a hunger strike in the heart of the square. Its aim, he said, was to compel both the government and the student protesters to reflect on their own behavior.

Standing near the Monument to the People's Heroes in the square on June 3, 1989, Liu addressed the students with a bullhorn. The scene was captured in a 1995 documentary, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, by filmmakers Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton.

"A major problem with the student movement," Liu told the students, "is that it is obsessed with opposing the government, but unconcerned with practicing democratic principles in its own ranks."

He suggested that students consolidate their gains and return to campus to try to make politics there more democratic. "To replace a military dictatorship with a student dictatorship would hardly be a victory," he said. "It would be a tragic failure."

In the early hours of June 4, 1989, as soldiers gunned down protesters in the streets of the capital, Liu negotiated with the military to let the remaining students leave the square unharmed.

For his role in the movement, Liu was jailed for 21 months — the first of what would be four stints in prison.

The final one started in 2009. He was jailed for his role in drafting a call for political reform known as Charter 08. The document recounted how the Communist Party, just like the nationalists before them, had promised a modern, democratic China — but failed to deliver.

Chinese intellectuals had been pointing this out for years. But Perry Link says China's leaders particularly objected to one item in the charter.

"That item of ending one-party dictatorship stuck in their craw, I believe," he says.

Liu Xiaobo was not the charter's main author — but of its roughly 300 signatories, he drew the heaviest punishment. Link, who helped Liu translate the charter into English, says Liu told the other authors and signers that he was willing to take the rap for the document.

Liu was sentenced to jail on Dec. 25, 2009. China dismissed widespread international condemnation of the verdict as interference in its internal affairs.

The following year, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

The head of the Nobel committee placed Liu's prize on an empty chair to symbolize his absence from the award ceremony that year. Liu was the third Nobel laureate to receive the Peace Prize while under arrest or in detention. (The first was German journalist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935; the second, Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.)

When Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, visited him in prison to give him news of the award, "His first reaction was not happiness or pride," Yu Jie recalls. "He said the prize was for the Tiananmen generation, and for the students who had died."

China's state media have described Liu as a stooge of the West, saying his Nobel Peace Prize was a sign of the West's prejudice, arrogance and intent to impose its own ideology on China.

China punished Norway by suspending political and economic ties — including salmon imports from Norway — until last year, when Oslo promised to respect "China's core interests and major concerns."

But Link says that Liu was able to transcend such acrimonious politics. He says a visit Liu made one day to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York led to a sort of revelation.

"He realized in that great museum that the big problems of humanity are not really East vs. West," Link says. "They're really much broader, much more existential than that."

In a document written on the day of his trial titled "I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement," Liu said, "I hope that I will be the last victim of China's endless literary inquisitions and that from now on no one will be incriminated because of speech."

In the same document — which also served as his Nobel Peace Prize lecture a year later, read in his absence by Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann — he brimmed with confidence that the rule of law and human rights would someday prevail in China. "There is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom," he wrote, "and China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme."

For now, Liu Xiaobo remains largely unknown in his own country, and his name has been erased from the country's Chinese-language media and Internet.</s>The death of the Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who died on Thursday while serving an 11-year prison sentence, has prompted an outpouring of grief and rage around the world.

Liu, 61, was a lifelong advocate for democracy and freedom who was jailed by the Chinese authorities multiple times. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, while he was imprisoned.

This spring he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. Beijing granted medical parole for him to receive treatment, including from foreign experts, but the government refused to allow him to travel abroad for medical care.

Liu's wife, the poet Liu Xia, remains under house arrest, although she has not been charged with an offense.

His death has led to widespread criticism of Beijing, including outrage over Liu's original imprisonment and allegations that the state delayed his diagnosis or denied him treatment that might have saved his life.

Berit Reiss-Anderson, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters in an emailed statement that the government of China "bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death.

"We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill," Reiss-Andersen said, according to the wire service.

PEN America said in a statement that Liu's death "will forever be a black mark marring China's reputation under international law and global human rights standards.

"As President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo was a friend and compatriot for writers all over the world who struggle against tyranny using words as their sole weapon," PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said in the statement. "Liu Xiaobo's purported crime was no crime at all, but rather a visionary exposition on the potential future of a country he loved."

Nossel denounced the length of Xiaobo's prison sentence, and said Beijing limited his access to high-quality medical care.

"China's refusal to honor Liu Xiaobo's last wish to travel overseas for treatment and its decision to hold him incommunicado during his dying days are a cruel epitaph in the tale of a powerful regime's determination to crush a brave man," she said.

The Guardian, meanwhile, spoke to several of Liu's friends and fellow activists, who were heartbroken and angry about Liu's death:



" 'It is so hard. I don't know if I can say anything,' said the author and activist Tienchi Martin-Liao, a longtime friend, breaking down in tears as she learned of Liu's death. 'I hate this government ... I am furious and lots of people share my feeling. It is not only sadness – it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this? I don't have the words to describe it.' ... " 'Liu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead,' said Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the Beijing Spring. 'Liu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint.' "Zhao Hui, a writer and activist who goes by the pen name Mo Zhixu, said: 'I feel bitter hatred ... It is so cruel and inhuman.' "



Looking further into the future, Liu's international counsel Jared Genser released a statement that mixed mourning with defiance.

"Despite the tragedy that Liu's freedom has come from his death, it is clear today that the Chinese government has lost," Genser said. "Liu's ideas and his dreams will persist, spread, and will, one day, come to fruition. And his courage and his sacrifice for his country will inspire millions of Chinese activists and dissidents to persevere until China has become the multi-party democracy that Liu knew to his core was within its people's grasp."

But while Liu's death is deeply felt within the community of activists and writers, many in China — where the media is controlled by the state — were not even aware of his illness and death.

As NPR's Anthony Kuhn notes, "Liu Xiaobo remains largely unknown in his own country, and his name has been erased from the country's Chinese-language media and Internet."</s>China's Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo has passed away at the age of 61.

He died in hospital today after being transferred there from a prison a month ago.

Liu was serving an 11 year sentence for 'subversion'.

The legal bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang, where he had been hospitalised, confirmed his death in a statement.



Supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad however Chinese authorities insisted that he remain in the country.

Liu had expressed a wish to seek medical treatment in either the US or Germany to help prolong his life. Doctors from both countries visited him earlier this week and said that he could be moved but staff at the hospital would need to act fast.

He was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

Liu was arrested in 2008 after co-writing Charter 08, a petition that called for the protection of basic human rights and reform of China's one-party Communist system.

He was jailed for 11 years.

In 2010 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Laureate Prize while serving his fourth prison sentence. Liu was banned from attending the awards ceremony with a chair left empty in his honour.

He is survived by his wife Liu Xia who has been placed under house arrest since the time of her husband being awarded the Nobel award. She suffered a heart attack in 2014 and was diagnosed with depression after years of detention.

Western governments, rights groups and a coalition of Nobel prize winners had repeatedly called for his release.

Liu was the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel peace prize and only three people to have won it while detained by their own government.</s>The death of the Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who died on Thursday while serving an 11-year prison sentence, has prompted an outpouring of grief and rage around the world.

Liu, 61, was a lifelong advocate for democracy and freedom who was jailed by the Chinese authorities multiple times. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, while he was imprisoned.

This spring he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. Beijing granted medical parole for him to receive treatment, including from foreign experts, but the government refused to allow him to travel abroad for medical care.

Liu's wife, the poet Liu Xia, remains under house arrest, although she has not been charged with an offense.

His death has led to widespread criticism of Beijing, including outrage over Liu's original imprisonment and allegations that the state delayed his diagnosis or denied him treatment that might have saved his life.

Berit Reiss-Anderson, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters in an emailed statement that the government of China "bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death.

"We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill," Reiss-Andersen said, according to the wire service.

PEN America said in a statement that Liu's death "will forever be a black mark marring China's reputation under international law and global human rights standards.

"As President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo was a friend and compatriot for writers all over the world who struggle against tyranny using words as their sole weapon," PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said in the statement. "Liu Xiaobo's purported crime was no crime at all, but rather a visionary exposition on the potential future of a country he loved."

Nossel denounced the length of Xiaobo's prison sentence, and said Beijing limited his access to high-quality medical care.

"China's refusal to honor Liu Xiaobo's last wish to travel overseas for treatment and its decision to hold him incommunicado during his dying days are a cruel epitaph in the tale of a powerful regime's determination to crush a brave man," she said.

The Guardian, meanwhile, spoke to several of Liu's friends and fellow activists, who were heartbroken and angry about Liu's death:



" 'It is so hard. I don't know if I can say anything,' said the author and activist Tienchi Martin-Liao, a longtime friend, breaking down in tears as she learned of Liu's death. 'I hate this government ... I am furious and lots of people share my feeling. It is not only sadness – it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this? I don't have the words to describe it.' ... " 'Liu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead,' said Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the Beijing Spring. 'Liu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint.' "Zhao Hui, a writer and activist who goes by the pen name Mo Zhixu, said: 'I feel bitter hatred ... It is so cruel and inhuman.' "



Looking further into the future, Liu's international counsel Jared Genser released a statement that mixed mourning with defiance.

"Despite the tragedy that Liu's freedom has come from his death, it is clear today that the Chinese government has lost," Genser said. "Liu's ideas and his dreams will persist, spread, and will, one day, come to fruition. And his courage and his sacrifice for his country will inspire millions of Chinese activists and dissidents to persevere until China has become the multi-party democracy that Liu knew to his core was within its people's grasp."

But while Liu's death is deeply felt within the community of activists and writers, many in China — where the media is controlled by the state — were not even aware of his illness and death.

As NPR's Anthony Kuhn notes, "Liu Xiaobo remains largely unknown in his own country, and his name has been erased from the country's Chinese-language media and Internet."</s>Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, China's most prominent political prisoner, died Thursday at a hospital in the country's northeast, officials said. He was 61.

Liu had been transferred to the hospital after being diagnosed with advanced liver cancer in prison in May but remained under police custody. In an online announcement, the judicial bureau of the city of Shenyang said he died of multiple organ failure.

Liu was only the second Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in prison, a fact pointed to by human rights groups as an indication of the Chinese Communist Party's increasingly hard line against its critics. The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died from tuberculosis in Germany in 1938 while serving a sentence for opposing Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

"Hitler was wild and strong and thought he was right — but history proved he was wrong in imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize winner," said Mo Shaoping, an old friend and Liu's former lawyer, adding that he was heartbroken by Liu's death. "The authorities consider Liu Xiaobo guilty, but history will prove he is not."

Liu's supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.

News of Liu's death triggered an outpouring of dismay among his friends and supporters.

"There are only two words to describe how we feel right now: grief and fury," family friend and activist Wu Yangwei, better known by his penname Ye Du, said by phone. "The only way we can grieve for Xiaobo and bring his soul some comfort is to work even harder to try to keep his influence alive."

Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.

"What I demanded of myself was this: whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity," Liu wrote in "I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement," which he had hoped to read out in court when being sentenced in 2009. He was not permitted to do so and received an 11-year prison sentence.

He came to prominence following the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which he called the "major turning point" in his life. Liu had been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York but returned early to China in May 1989 to join the movement that was sweeping the country and which the Communist Party regarded as a grave challenge to its authority.

When the Chinese government sent troops and tanks into Beijing to quash the protests on the night of June 3-4, Liu persuaded some students to leave the square rather than face down the army. The military crackdown killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of people and heralded a more repressive era.

Liu became one of hundreds of Chinese imprisoned for crimes linked to the demonstrations. It was only the first of four stays in prisons owing to his ideology.

His final prison sentence was for co-authoring "Charter 08," a document circulated in 2008 that called for more freedom of expression, human rights and an independent judiciary in China. Although Liu wasn't the initiator, he was a prominent force behind it and already well known to the authorities.

The sentence only increased Liu's prominence outside of his country.

In 2010, while Liu was serving his sentence in a prison in a small city in China's northeast, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, with the Norwegian-based committee citing Liu's "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

The award enraged China's government, which condemned it as a political farce. Within days, Liu's wife, artist and poet Liu Xia, was put under house arrest, despite not being convicted of any crime. China also punished Norway, even though its government has no say over the independent Nobel panel's decisions. China suspended a bilateral trade deal and restricted imports of Norwegian salmon, and relations only resumed in 2017.

Dozens of Liu's supporters were prevented from leaving the country to accept the award on his behalf. Instead, Liu's absence at the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, Norway, was marked by an empty chair. Another empty chair was for Liu Xia.

Liu was born on Dec. 28, 1955, in the northeastern city of Changchun, the son of a language and literature professor who was a committed party member. The middle child in a family of five boys, he was among the first students to attend Jilin University when college entrance examinations resumed following the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Liu studied Chinese literature there and later moved to the capital, first as a graduate student and then as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University.

After spending nearly two years in detention following the Tiananmen crackdown, Liu was detained for the second time in 1995 after drafting a plea for political reform. Later that year, he was detained a third time after co-drafting "Opinion on Some Major Issues Concerning our Country Today." That resulted in a three-year sentence to a labor camp, during which time he married Liu Xia. He is survived by his wife and by his son from his first marriage.

Released in 1999, he joined the international literary and human rights organization PEN and continued advocating for human rights and democracy.

Liu Xia's brother was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment over a real estate dispute which supporters said was designed to further persecute Liu Xiaobo's family over his actions.

Two years after Liu's Nobel prize, a Chinese writer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, to the delight of Chinese authorities. Mo Yan is not a critic of the Communist Party, and after initially evading questions from reporters, he eventually said he wished for Liu Xiaobo's freedom.

Other Nobel laureates were more outspoken. In 2012, an appeal by 134 Nobel laureates, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called the detentions of both Lius a violation of international law and urged their immediate release. Fellow PEN members such as Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie appealed for his release in a letter on June 29 after he was transferred from prison to the hospital.

Bodeen reported from Beijing. Associated Press writer Gillian Wong and researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report from Beijing.</s>The death of the Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who died on Thursday while serving an 11-year prison sentence, has prompted an outpouring of grief and rage around the world.

Liu, 61, was a lifelong advocate for democracy and freedom who was jailed by the Chinese authorities multiple times. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, while he was imprisoned.

This spring he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. Beijing granted medical parole for him to receive treatment, including from foreign experts, but the government refused to allow him to travel abroad for medical care.

Liu's wife, the poet Liu Xia, remains under house arrest, although she has not been charged with an offense.

His death has led to widespread criticism of Beijing, including outrage over Liu's original imprisonment and allegations that the state delayed his diagnosis or denied him treatment that might have saved his life.

Berit Reiss-Anderson, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters in an emailed statement that the government of China "bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death.

"We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill," Reiss-Andersen said, according to the wire service.

PEN America said in a statement that Liu's death "will forever be a black mark marring China's reputation under international law and global human rights standards.

"As President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, Liu Xiaobo was a friend and compatriot for writers all over the world who struggle against tyranny using words as their sole weapon," PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said in the statement. "Liu Xiaobo's purported crime was no crime at all, but rather a visionary exposition on the potential future of a country he loved."

Nossel denounced the length of Xiaobo's prison sentence, and said Beijing limited his access to high-quality medical care.

"China's refusal to honor Liu Xiaobo's last wish to travel overseas for treatment and its decision to hold him incommunicado during his dying days are a cruel epitaph in the tale of a powerful regime's determination to crush a brave man," she said.

The Guardian, meanwhile, spoke to several of Liu's friends and fellow activists, who were heartbroken and angry about Liu's death:



" 'It is so hard. I don't know if I can say anything,' said the author and activist Tienchi Martin-Liao, a longtime friend, breaking down in tears as she learned of Liu's death. 'I hate this government ... I am furious and lots of people share my feeling. It is not only sadness – it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this? I don't have the words to describe it.' ... " 'Liu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead,' said Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the Beijing Spring. 'Liu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint.' "Zhao Hui, a writer and activist who goes by the pen name Mo Zhixu, said: 'I feel bitter hatred ... It is so cruel and inhuman.' "



Looking further into the future, Liu's international counsel Jared Genser released a statement that mixed mourning with defiance.

"Despite the tragedy that Liu's freedom has come from his death, it is clear today that the Chinese government has lost," Genser said. "Liu's ideas and his dreams will persist, spread, and will, one day, come to fruition. And his courage and his sacrifice for his country will inspire millions of Chinese activists and dissidents to persevere until China has become the multi-party democracy that Liu knew to his core was within its people's grasp."

But while Liu's death is deeply felt within the community of activists and writers, many in China — where the media is controlled by the state — were not even aware of his illness and death.

As NPR's Anthony Kuhn notes, "Liu Xiaobo remains largely unknown in his own country, and his name has been erased from the country's Chinese-language media and Internet."</s>Officials say China’s most prominent political prisoner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, has died. He was 61.

Liu had been hospitalized for advanced liver cancer diagnosed in prison in May. The judicial bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang said Thursday he died of multiple organ failure.

His supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.

Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.
Prominent Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo dies.