Writers call for release of Chinese dissident
By Brian Montopoli
Don DeLillo, E.L. Doctorow, Edward Albee and A.M. Holmes were among the writers who gathered Thursday to call on China to release writer and activist Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” in his writings.
Liu, the most prominent dissident in China, was sentenced on Christmas day. He was one of the authors of Charter 08, a petition circulated last year that calls for greater freedoms and democratic reforms in China.
The petition includes the line, “we should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.”
The writers who assembled for the protest read the passages deemed subversive by the Chinese government, as well as poems Liu wrote during a three-year term in a labor camp in the late 1990s. They also read from the verdict against Liu.
Among the sentences deemed subversive is Liu’s assertion that “since the Communist Party of China took power, generations of CPC dictators have cared most about their own power and least about human life.”
As snow fell and a small crowd watched, writer Honor Moore, standing on the steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library, read a portion of the verdict against Liu.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/31/world/main6042285.shtml?tag=stack
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