The Nobel Prize

For over twenty years, Liu Xiaobo fought for a more open and democratic China. He was sentenced to two years in prison for taking part in the student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and served three years in a labour camp for having criticised China's one-party system. In 2008 Liu helped to draft and gather support for Charter 08, a manifesto for a peaceful transition to democracy and an end to one-party rule. He was arrested in December 2008 and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities. In a statement at his trial in 2009, he told his wife, the poet Liu Xia, “Your love has been the sunlight that leaps over high walls and shines through iron bars.” They were planning for their life after his release but sadly Liu Xiaobo was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer and died hospital in a hospital in 2017, still under heavy guard. Learn more about the 2010 peace prize laureate: