This Day in 1989: October 5, 1989, Dalai Lama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

On October 5, 1989, Norway Nobel Prize Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize of the year was being awarded to the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), honoring his efforts in advocating "peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect" in the Tibet struggle.

In March, 1989, riots and martial law broke out in Tibet. However, it is generally understood that the award was largely influenced by the 1989 student protest and Tiananmen massacre.


Days of 1989

Ding Zilin Recalls 74 Days of House Arrest

As dissident Liu Xiaobo was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, other dissidents in China faced lengthy period of isolation and house arrest at the hand of the government. Many of them lost contact with outside world for weeks, if not months, of time. Ding Zilin, founder of "Tiananmen Mothers", and her husband Jiang Peikun are no exception. They were forced into house arrest for 74 days between October 8, when the news of Nobel prize first broke, and December 20.

They recently published a detailed account of their experience.

On October 8, the couple were in Wuxi, a southern city, when they waited for the news on their computer. Immediately after the announcement, they received a phone call from a foreign media for comment. Ding Zilin managed only a couple of sentences before the phone went dead. Soon, their internet connection was also cut. But they were still able to contact a few friends with cell phone and drafted a statement in the name of "Tiananmen Mothers". They managed to send out the statement by email from the apartment of a relative's.

Yet no sooner as the email was transmitted four strangers, self-identified as local officers for national security, rushed into the apartment to confiscate the computer and USB drives. In the ensuring struggle, Ding Zilin fainted and fell. She had to be hospitalized.

For weeks, the couple were confined at Wuxi, with their request of returning to Beijing denied and without any computer, phone or cell phone. Their relatives were forced to sign an agreement not to provide any assistance for them. Ding Zilin suffered from memory loss. The doctor who examined her said she had had a concussion.

In November, they learned that some of their friends had received email from their account, which appeared to be forged by their handlers.

After much protesting and bargaining, they were finally allowed to return Beijing on December 14. But at the last minute, they were forbidden to return home and had to continue their house arrest in a secret location in the suburb. Not until December 20, the day before their respective birthdays on 20 and 21, when they were finally allowed to return home and see their surviving son.

The details of their ordeal, written by the couple in Chinese, can be read here.

Who Are and Who Are Not Attending the Nobel Ceremony

It is quite clear that Liu Xiaobo will not be able to make it to the ceremony of Nobel Peace Prize, neither could his wife Liu Xia. It is likely that, for the first time in the history of this award, an empty chair will represent the honoree.

In the diplomatic scene, the Chinese government was successful to persuade or pressure only 5 other countries to boycott the ceremony: Russia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Morocco, and Irag. On the other hand, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be there to represent America, a very high-profile gesture.

Lynn Chang, a famous Chinese American violinist, will be performing at the ceremony. Also invited to perform was a children's choir from China, but they eventually declined for fear of repercussions. A children's choir from Norway will sing in their stead.

Former student Wang Dan expressed his regret for not being able to make the trip on his Facebook page today. He cited difficulty in schedule at the time of finals for the course he is teaching in Taiwan.

Another dissident who won't be there is Dai Qing, who previously had made a public announcement to attend the ceremony in support of Liu Xiaobo. She had the trip planed but then cancelled it after she learned that Wan Yanhai (万延海), another invitee on Liu Xia's list, will be able to make the trip. Dai Qing is now on her way back to China.

Wan Yanhai is an AIDS activist in China who has recently moved to US.

Dai Qing Announces Intention to Attend Nobel Ceremony

The question of who would be able to show up and accept the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is still up in the air weeks before the scheduled ceremony. It is almost certain that Liu Xiaobo himself, who is currently in jail, or his wife Liu Xia would not be able to make the trip. So much so that Liu Xia had issued an open invitation to their friends. Most on that list are currently under government surveillance and lost their freedom in China. Except perhaps for one.

That one is Dai Qing, a famous journalist and writer who had actively participated in the 1989 student movement (albeit in a somewhat controversial fashion). Dai Qing is also a fellow of the environmental organization Probe International and is on a cross-Canada speaking tour on its behalf. Therefore, she is not under the direct control of the Chinese government.

In an essay titled Liu Xia's Grand List, Dai Qing reflected on her feelings of the award and current state of human rights in China and went on to offer herself as the last resort of attending the ceremony:

Now Liu Xia’s Grand List is flying through cyberspace. Although the seats in the award ceremony hall are limited, people still hope that if Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia are ultimately not allowed to go, the Chinese authorities will allow their comrades to go.

I was honored to be included in Liu Xia’s Long List of “Xiaobo’s fellow friends.” In all fairness, I cannot compare with anyone else on the list in terms of my contribution or hardship in China’s struggle for modernization. I also cannot compare with the others in my personal relationship with Xiaobo: our face-to-face contact could be counted in only dozens of hours, not to mention that I have also written articles critical of him.

Like many Chinese citizens, it is painful and sad for me to see China’s foreign relations leading to so many conflicts. Compared with our current territorial and resource challenges and other pressing concerns, Xiaobo’s matter would seem to have an easy resolution: Release Xiaobo. Tell the world that in China, any citizen is free to propose ideas on national affairs to the government. If Liu Yunshan (China’s propaganda chief) believes this would cause the collapse of heaven and earth, then the authorities could just release Liu Xia, whose life for the past many years has been devoted to her poetry and photography.

If none of this takes place, there is still more than a month before the awards ceremony. The closest friends and comrades of the Laureate, who have been with him through all of the hardship, should be allowed to go to Oslo. But if the authorities ignore all these calls and no one on Liu Xia’s list is permitted to go abroad through the proper procedures, it happens that I am in Canada now for an academic conference.

To comfort Xiaobo in prison and Liu Xia under house arrest, and for all who are on Liu Xia’s list – those who are either under police surveillance or in custody or warned to behave during a forced “tea conversation with the police,” or worse, those “wearing a wig” (a term to describe those hooded and taken away by the security police) – then I shall tell the world that it is not true that no Chinese citizen who fights against authoritarianism will be able to attend the grand ceremony in Oslo. If necessary, I will go there to fulfill my duty to my friend.

Liu Xiaobo's Wife Invites Friends to Nobel Ceremony

In an open letter published on the Internet, Liu Xiaobo's wife Liu Xia expressed her gratitude to many friends who had supported Liu Xiaobo. She said she has been in virtual house arrest since 10/8 and has difficulty in communicating with the outside world.

The Nobel Committee has invited her to attend the ceremony on his husband's behalf. But Liu Xia thought there was little to no chance for her to be able to make the trip. However, she believed that Liu Xiaobo would have wished his friends to attend this historical moment, so she made a list of 143 people she would like to invite. Almost all people in the list are currently in China.

Among the list, many were significant participants of the 1989 student movement, including Yu Haocheng (于浩成), Bao Tong (鲍彤), Li Datong (李大同), Liu Suli (刘苏里), Qi Zhiyong (齐志勇), Zhou Duo (周舵), Gao Yu (高瑜), Dai Qing (戴晴), Zheng Xuguang (郑旭光), Wang Debang (王德邦), Chen Ziming (陈子明), Jiang Qisheng (江棋生), Ma Shaofang (马少方), Liang Xiaoyan (梁晓燕), and Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强).

Fang Lizhi: Liu Xiaobo and Illusions About China

The following is an op-ed piece by Fang Lizhi, published in New York Times today:

Liu Xiaobo and Illusions About China

By FANG LIZHI

Published: October 11, 2010

PHOENIX, ARIZONA — I heartily applaud the Nobel Committee for awarding its Peace Prize to the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo for his long and nonviolent struggle for human rights in China. In doing so, the committee has challenged the West to re-examine a dangerous notion that has become prevalent since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre: that economic development will inevitably lead to democracy in China.

Increasingly, throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, this argument gained sway. Some no doubt believed it; others perhaps found it convenient for their business interests. Many trusted the top Chinese policymakers who sought to persuade foreign investors that if they continued their investments without an embarrassing “linkage” to human rights principles, all would get better at China’s own pace.

More than 20 years have passed since Tiananmen. China has officially become the world’s second largest economy. Yet the hardly radical Liu Xiaobo and thousands of other dissidents rot in jail for merely demanding basic rights enshrined by the United Nations and taken for granted by Western investors in their own countries. Human rights have not improved despite a soaring economy.

Liu Xiaobo’s own experience over the last 20 years ought to be enough evidence on its own to demolish any idea that democracy will automatically emerge as a result of growing prosperity.

I knew Mr. Liu in the 1980s when he was an outspoken young man. He took part in 1989 in the peaceful protests at Tiananmen Square and was sentenced to two years in prison for his efforts. From then until 1999 he was in and out of labor camps, prisons, detention centers and house arrest. In 2008, he initiated the “Charter 08” petition calling for China to comply with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consequently, he was again arrested, this time sentenced to a particularly harsh 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” — even though China is a signatory of the U.N. declaration.

According to human rights organizations, there are about 1,400 people political, religious and “conscience” prisoners in prison or labor camps across China. Their “crimes” have included membership in underground political or religious groups, independent trade unions and nongovernmental organizations, or they have been arrested for participating in strikes or demonstrations and have publicly expressed dissenting political opinions.

This undeniable reality ought to be a wake up call to anyone who still believes the autocratic rulers of China will alter their disregard of human rights just because the country is richer. Regardless of how widely China’s leaders have opened its markets to the outside world, they have not retreated even half a step from their repressive political creed.

On the contrary, China’s dictators have become even more contemptuous of the value of universal human rights. In the decade after Tiananmen, the Communist government released 100 political prisoners in order to improve its image. Since 2000, as the Chinese economy grew stronger and stronger and the pressure from the international community diminished, the government has returned to hard-line repression.

The international community should be especially concerned over China’s breach of international agreements. Besides the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, China also signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1988. Yet, torture, maltreatment and psychiatric manipulation are extensively used in detention and prison camps in China. This includes beatings, extended solitary confinement, severely inadequate food, extreme exposure to cold and heat and denial of medical treatment.

As the regime’s power grows with prosperity, the Communist Party feels confident in its immunity as it violates its own Constitution. Article 35, for example, says that “citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” Yet who can doubt that the government regularly violates these rights.

As the unfortunate history of Japan during the first half of the 20th century illustrates, a rising economic power that violates human rights is a threat to peace.

Thankfully, the courageous Nobel Committee has exposed this link once again in the case of a prospering China. The committee is absolutely right to make a connection between respect for human rights and world peace. As Alfred Nobel so well understood, human rights are the prerequisite for the “fraternity between nations.”

Fang Lizhi, a professor of physics at the University of Arizona, was a leader of the pro-democracy movement in China before fleeing the country in 1989.

Book Excerpt: Liu Xiaobo in 1989

Amid much anticipation, jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

Liu Xiaobo, then a professor at the Beijing Normal University, was an active participant in the 1989 student movement, especially at the latter stage. He made his first appearance in the book Standoff at Tiananmen in the critical meeting of May 27, 1989, in which he unsuccessfully tried to promote student leader Wuer Kaixi as a spokesperson of the movement, which infuriated other leaders such as Chai ling and Feng Congde.

On June 2, 1989, Liu Xiaobo took an initiative of his own and led the so-called Four Gentlemen hunger strike:

Few people noticed that the roar of the "Flying Tigers" had disappeared for several days. It was not until May 30 when the government announced that a dozen leaders of that motorcycle gang had been arrested for "inciting violence and public disturbance." There was hardly any reaction. Most people still regarded the gang as punks.

The Workers Autonomous Federation sprang to action when they learned that some of their leaders were seen being dragged into vehicles and hauled away. They asked students for help. Students and workers marched together to the office building of the Ministry of Public Security. After a day of sit-in, they successfully forced the release of the abducted workers. Still, nobody bothered to inquire about the "Flying Tigers."

Just like Liu Gang before him, Wang Juntao was now seeing his influence dissipating. His grand vision of a George Washington style leadership crashed and burned with the failure of withdrawing from Tiananmen Square. The Capital Joint Conference had moved to the university campus area and had rapidly become a mere shell of its previous self. Most prominent intellectuals had disappeared. They left the capital for the provinces or went into hiding. Wang Juntao shared the pessimistic sentiment. He told Chen Ziming that it should be time for them to plan for the aftermath as bloodshed was now inevitable.

Wang Juntao instructed personnel at their Institute to produce fake identification papers for leaders of the movement. He arranged safe houses in the outskirts of the city and concocted a rough plan of evacuation in stages. He even went so far as to pull out Liu Gang and Zhang Lun, two of the non-students from his Institute who were involved the deepest, and send them out into the suburbs. Chen Ziming was not as convinced of the imminent danger. He believed that the movement had reached such a scale that the possibility of an outright crackdown had diminished.

International Children's Day arrived on June 1. Students occupying Tiananmen Square tried their hands at being good big brothers and sisters. They cleaned up the place and prepared small gifts for young visitors who came with their parents for the newest tourist attraction in town: the Goddess of Democracy. But the day did not start well. Li Lu was awoken by the disturbing news that Feng Congde and Chai Ling had been kidnapped. He rushed over and found the couple tied up and gagged in a tent. Li Lu assessed the situation and realized that it was not a government operation but the action of a renegade group within their own ranks. It was yet another coup attempt to overthrow their leadership. Calmly, Li Lu summoned student marshals and resolved the conflict. However, the escalation of their infighting had clearly reached an alarming level.

Professor Liu Xiaobo was very upset. After the brief excitement at the Capital Joint Conference, he was seeing his fellow intellectuals reverting back to their usual ways. They were running away in droves at the first sign of danger. Some went into hiding. Others were helplessly resigned to the fact that they had no control of the situation dominated by radical students at Tiananmen Square. Nobody, in his mind, was taking any responsibility. It was a deep-rooted tradition of Chinese intellectuals, a community that had been rightfully regarded as pathetic and hopeless by numerous generations.

As someone who had returned to Beijing in the face of the April 26 People's Daily editorial, Liu Xiaobo believed that it was time to take a stand. He realized that he had to commit himself to the movement personally before he could hope to have any real influence. To achieve that, he had to make a grand gesture of his own: a hunger strike.

Wang Juntao did not agree with the idea at first but was convinced by Liu Xiaobo's reasoning. To avoid escalating hoopla this time, they decided to launch it as a relay of symbolic strikes only, conducted by teams of prominent intellectuals. When one team finished their strike, another continued on. In this manner, they could parade famous names and faces in Tiananmen Square to sustain the occupation to that precious date of June 20.

The trouble was that there were no longer many prominent intellectuals left within their ranks. Liu Xiaobo was only able to recruit Zhou Dou, a middle-aged scholar who had been active behind the scenes, and Gao Xin, a young school newspaper editor in Liu Xiaobo's Beijing Normal University. Neither of them had any name recognition. But they eventually got the prominent name they needed in the form of a rock star Hou Dejian.

Hou Dejian made his fame with his folksy little songs in the college campuses of Taiwan during the 1970's. In 1978, when the United States abandoned Taiwan for a formal relationship with mainland China, the young Hou Dejian wrote Children of the Dragon to express the sorrow and determination of his people. Despite its origin, the song became an overnight sensation when it was introduced on the mainland two years later. The phrase "children of dragon" became a synonym for the Chinese identity.

But Hou Dejian did not see much future in Taiwan for himself. In an act considered traitorous on his home island, he permanently settled in Beijing and cultivated his fame with a much larger audience. Little did he know that his little personal adventure would lead him right into a standoff at Tiananmen Square. Hou Dejian had just come back from a concert in Hong Kong to rally support for students in Beijing. He had already committed to another concert. Therefore, he could only fast for forty eight hours while his comrades pledged a seventy-two hour hunger strike.

In the late afternoon of June 2, the four of them, referred to as the Four Gentlemen, walked into Tiananmen Square. They read a manifesto of their own, with a stab at the Chinese intellectual community:

We start our hunger strike. We protest. We call upon people. We repent. We are not looking for death, we are looking for the true life. Under the irrational militant violence by the Li Peng regime, Chinese intellectuals must end their all-words-but-no-action tradition of osteomalacia. We must protest the military rule with our actions. We must give birth to a brand new political culture with our own actions.

The lengthy manifesto went on to criticize the government and "radical students" for escalating the crisis with their irrationality. It proudly claimed that they, the new hunger strikers, would "not allow hatred to poison our wisdom, for we have no enemies."

Nobody paid any attention to the manifesto. Thousands and thousands of people rushed into Tiananmen Square with only one thing on their minds: Hou Dejian. People in Beijing found a new reason to come: "Go see the Goddess first and then the 'monkey [Hou]'!" Yet even the Goddess of Democracy could not compete with the power of a live rock star. Sitting on the pedestal of the Monument to People's Heroes, Hou Dejian, a shy and skinny figure, was forced to sing his songs repeatedly. Again and again, he led the entire Square in renditions of Children of Dragon. When he had to take a break, Liu Xiaobo tried to make his speeches. While hatred did not poison his wisdom, the "Square fever" did. Facing thousands of cheering fans, the rational thoughts contained in the well-written manifesto were blown away. He praised the students with extreme enthusiasm and vowed to carry on their struggle to the very end. He did not get to say much anyway, as the impatient audience broke out into loud chants. "Hou Dejian," "Hou Dejian!"

Just like that, the Four Gentlemen's hunger strike evolved into a freaky circus show.

Only a day later, in that fateful morning of June 3, 1989, Liu Xiaobo and his Four Gentlemen helped persuade protesting students into a peaceful withdraw as the tanks closed in on them during the massacre.

After the massacre, Liu Xiaobo was arrested. He was initially fingered by the government as the "black hand" behind the movement, a charge later dropped for lack of evidence. After being jailed for a year, he was eventually released without a formal sentence.

Vaclav Havel Calls for Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo

Former Czech dissident and President Vaclav Havel wrote an op-ed piece in New York Times today calling for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The letter is cosigned by two other former Czech dissidents who had participated in the Charter 77 movement thirty years ago.

The letter praises Liu Xiaobo's efforts in leading the Charter 08 movement in China as an echo of the Charter 77:

As in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, the response of the Chinese government was swift and brutal. Dozens if not hundreds of signatories were called in for questioning. A handful of perceived ringleaders were detained. Professional promotions were held up, research grants denied and applications to travel abroad rejected. Newspapers and publishing houses were ordered to blacklist anyone who had signed Charter 08. Most seriously, the prominent writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo, a key drafter of Charter 08, was arrested. Liu had already spent five years in prison for his support of peaceful Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Held for more than a year with limited access to his wife or his lawyer, Liu was put on trial for subversion. In December 2009, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Despite Liu’s imprisonment, his ideas cannot be shackled. Charter 08 has articulated an alternative vision of China, challenging the official line that any decisions on reforms are the exclusive province of the state. It has encouraged younger Chinese to become politically active, and boldly made the case for the rule of law and constitutional multiparty democracy. And it has served as a jumping-off point for a series of conversations and essays on how to get there.

Perhaps most important, as in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, Charter 08 has forged connections among different groups that did not exist before. Before Charter 08, “we had to live in a certain kind of separate and solitary state,” one signatory wrote. “We were not good at expressing our own personal experiences to those around us.”

Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08 are changing that, for the better.

The authors "ask the Nobel Committee to honor Liu Xiaobo's more than two decades of unflinching and peaceful advocacy for reform, and to make him the first Chinese recipient of that prestigious award."

People of 1989: Liu Xiaobo

In 1989, Liu Xiaobo was a 34-year-old professor in Chinese literature and philosophy in Beijing Normal University. He was just starting to make a name for himself in the small circle of elite intellectuals with his sharp criticism of Chinese tradition and culture.

When the student movement broke out that spring, he was at New York visiting Columbia University in the middle of his multi-nation lecturing tour. He felt that he could not stay abroad any more, so he purchased a plane ticket for Beijing. On April 27 of that year, he was in transient at Tokyo airport when he heard the news of the People's Daily editorial which labeled the budding movement as "turmoil." Sensing the coming danger, he hesitated. But eventually he still boarded the flight and returned to Beijing.

Once there, he became a close friend and advisor to student leader Wuer Kaixi, who was from the same school. So much so that, during a critical meeting on May 27 of the Capital Joint Conference, he proposed to have Wuer Kaixi formally elected as "China's Lech Walesa." The proposal enraged fellow student leaders Feng Congde and Chai Ling, and contributed to the failure of a withdraw plan.

Later, he grew personally angry when he saw most prominent intellectuals chose to hide and run away when a severe suppression became imminent. In order to gain credibility so that he could influence students directly, he launched a hunger strike along with three others on June 2, barely more than a day before the massacre.

On the night of the massacre, he and his fellow hunger strikers were at the base of the Monument of People's Heroes with thousands of students. In an important incident, he led the efforts to destroy a gun that had appeared within their own ranks, preventing the possibility of a direct armed confrontation with the military. Initially, Professor Liu Xiaobo favored to persist and was against the idea of a voluntary withdraw. He was persuaded by his fellow hunger strikers and used all his power and persuasion to ensure students followed the withdraw plan.

In the immediate aftermath, he was arrested and briefly blamed as the "black hands," or conspirators, behind the movement. But eventually he was released without a formal sentence, after a detension of 20 months. Liu Xiaobo later wrote extensively on his thought process and feeling during the time, criticizing himself for behaving not strongly enough under pressure.

After losing his university job, Liu Xiaobo became a free-lance writer who frequently published his views on current events in oversea Chinese media. He is also active in efforts on assisting victims of the 1989 massacre, both financially and in other means. In October, 1996, he was sentenced for three years for criticizing the government.

In 2008, he initiated and drafted the "Charter of 08," calling for human rights and free elections, among other things. The document has collected more than 8,000 signatures.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to an 11 year prison term on December 25, 2009.

On October 8, 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017, of liver cancer, after briefly paroled from prison for hospital treatment. He was 61.

People of 1989