Several well-known writers, including Don DeLillo, E.L. Doctorow, Edward Albee and A.M. Holmes, gathered in the snow in New York to offer tribute to imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo before delivering a petition to the Chinese representative at the U.N. calling for Liu’s release. From CBS News:
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.
“He wrote the documents and used the Internet to publish them in order to slander and urge other people to overthrow our country’s democratic dictatorship and our socialist system,” the verdict said. “…The published documents have been spread through links and republishing. People read them and they have a bad effect. This is the crime of a major criminal and should be severely punished according to the law.”
After reading one of Liu’s poems, Doctorow, the author of “Ragtime” and other books, criticized the Chinese government for its “sorry record of artist intimidation.”
Read and listen to the introduction from K. Anthony Appiah. Watch a slideshow of the event from Flickr:
