How Liu Xiaobo got into trouble

The story of Charter 08, a human-​​rights manifesto

By now, most of us have heard of the jailed Chinese lit­er­ary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this month in a move that upset China’s lead­ers who view Liu Xiaobo as a trai­tor and a criminal.

It says, 'Here is a blueprint of where we think our country could be, and what kind of a country we really could be proud of.'

—Professor Perry Link

But fewer have heard of Charter 08, the human rights man­i­festo that Liu Xiaobo was involved in writ­ing and which was the doc­u­ment that led to his impris­on­ment. Charter 08 was released in China on December 10th 2008, the 60th anniver­sary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. One year later, Liu was tried on charges of “sub­ver­sion of state power” and sen­tenced to eleven years’ impris­on­ment and two years’ depri­va­tion of polit­i­cal rights.

Charter 08 is a civic ini­tia­tive that calls for greater free­doms, includ­ing an inde­pen­dent legal sys­tem, free­dom of expres­sion, and the elim­i­na­tion of one-​​party rule in China. In this encore pre­sen­ta­tion, we revisit Yangzom Brauen’s report with Professor Perry Link, an inter­na­tional expert on China’s human rights issues at UC Riverside, who was tapped by drafters of the doc­u­ment for help in trans­la­tion and dissemination.

This report was orig­i­nally broad­cast in February 2009.