Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese writer, intellectual,
democracy activist, literary critic, writer, professor, human rights, past
President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and past President of Minzhu
Zhongguo (Democratic China) magazine and because of being all of those things he
has also been imprisoned by the Chinese government since 2008. His specific crime
was to call for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule.
So the Godless bastards jailed him on suspicion of "inciting subversion of
state power". They sentenced him to eleven years' imprisonment.
Everything was going along as
usual for the Chinese until 2010 when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in absentia for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental
human rights in China."
In the meantime, Liu’s wife, Liu
Xia, who has not committed a crime, has been under house arrest for the same
amount of time and is completely locked out of the outside world. No television or Internet and goons are posted
at her door 24 hours a day seven days a week. The imprisonment has taken its
effect on her physical and mental health.
In this the face of this low life
behavior by the Chinese, the US Senate did the right thing, it passed a bill to
name the area outside the Chinese embassy “Liu Xiaobo Plaza” just as President
Reagan renamed the area outside the Soviet embassy in Washington “Andrei
Sakharov Plaza” in honor of the Russian scientist and dissident, also a winner
of the Nobel Peace Prize.
What good will it do? A lot. With
China, it’s all about saving face, especially where the Americans are
concerned. In fact, I’d call it a national obsession. Rename the tiny patch of
grass outside their embassy Liu Xiaobo Plaza, have the Chinese lose face in the
eyes of the world and watch how quickly they get reasonable on the subject.
But right now that doesn’t look
like it’s going to happen. The bill it died in the House at the hands of Jason
Chaffetz of Utah and the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan has refused to bring
the bill back from the dead.
Neither Ryan nor Chaffetz, or
anyone else for that matter has offered an explanation as to why their doing
this favor for the grunts who run the Chinese Thugocracy.
This ain’t China. They owe the American
public an answer on this.
Barrack Obama, the 2009 Nobel
peace laureate has never done anything to help free Mr. Liu.
This ain’t China. He owes the American
public an answer an answer on this.
If the reason Obama, Ryan and Chaffetz
are sitting silent is because they believe that honoring a dissident writer will
endanger commercial relations then that’s just cowardly, in fact silence when
occasion demands speaking out for the truth defines cowardice.
And why are we even dealing with
people like this? Kow-towing to a government that oppresses writers is beneath the
integrity of the people of the United States. Let’s ship our business over to
Latin America who are a lot less crazy than the Chinese government. What are
they going to do it?
Still, you have to ask the question;
what the hell happened to us?
We, the Americans, used to have
guts. We had a passion against injustice. The little guys all over the globe
looked to us to find courage and hope to stand up against certain death. Now we’re
afraid to raise our voice because some mega corporation could lose a few bucks
and it would upset a bunch goons in government.
Screw em and the great white
horse they rode in on.
Let’s strike a blow for the
little guy. Let’s do the right thing. Rename the tiny patch of grass on
Connecticut Avenue Liu Xiaobo plaza because it tells that punks in Peking.
Send them the message that we the
Americans, as divided as we sometimes are, truly believe that it is the responsibility
of every citizen of the earth to
question unjust authority because the demand for blind belief is the enemy of
the truth.
Let them know that we Americans
have never been cowards and we will not remain silent or neutral in this
injustice because to do that is place a great nation and a great people on the
side of the Chinese oppressors because, like I said, screw them and the great
white horse they rode in on.
John William Tuohy. Writer