Shades Off | Hong Kong protesters should be mindful of the fate of Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo

Hong Kong protesters need to be reminded. The China of July 1, 1997, is not the China of 2019. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has become confident, strong and arrogant. There is no leeway for demands to be met, nor a willingness to acknowledge peaceful agitation. The fate of Liu Xiaobo, the only Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is evidence enough.

The recent Nobel Prize awards make me think of Liu. Norwegian member of parliament, Guri Melby, last Tuesday nominated Hong Kong’s protesters for the next peace prize, contending that they deserved the high-profile award on the grounds that they “risk their lives and security every day to stand up for freedom of speech and basic democracy”.

Such ideals were the same as those of Liu, an academic and poet turned activist, who was jailed by Beijing for his beliefs and died in custody. The obvious difference is that under the “one country, two systems” principle, Hong Kong is supposed to remain substantially freer than mainland China, and its citizens are promised a more democratic future than at present.

Liu was, from the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 until his death at 61 from liver cancer on July 13, 2017, a leading figure in the mainland’s democracy and human rights movement. He believed in peaceful protest, expressing it through his writings and hunger strikes. For that, he was harassed and imprisoned, the last time in 2009 for 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.

It was for his part in Charter 08, a manifesto drawn up with other activists calling on the ruling Communist Party to implement 19 governing changes, including an independent judicial system, election of public officials, freedom of expression, and truth and reconciliation.

The Nobel Prize in 2010 gave him and his cause international recognition, but also in the eyes of his supporters, a death sentence. Beijing was furious at the Norwegian prize committee’s decision, the foreign ministry thundering that “Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law”.