the eldest of a small group of exiled chinese dissidents. brighteyes maybe you shall bow very soon understood that this was the start of a great movement towards democracy and so we decided on a joint publication of both open letters and declarations of our points of view and i get time and that time things were very different from today and that was the internet most people in china didn't even have a telephone company with the oh so we had to fax our declarations to beijing and all of our friends in beijing took them and posted them all over the city including the university on the famous triangle of democracy we were told that our text had raised a lot of interest and then the going to her. on the 22nd of april cheering who yelled banks official funeral the students once more descended on tiananmen square i the party leaders

gathered in the great hall of the people started to worry i. thank you sir it's a chair you show in the meantime louche elbow became a leader in the eyes of chinese intellectuals and he knew that if he didn't soon return to china he would exclude himself since then lose that status with his iraqi wheat so you want his political ambitions motivated this decision to vote for this it's in c.s. and it should or you if you all come back maybe that time is the most seem on the moment the maybe can change happen. so. only him say ok you can buy started here but i think the now. me and the hopi we're both a little bit a watery if we're back to china and maybe then just. even though the chinese regime had sharpened their tone on the 27th of april $989.00 tens of. thousands of students set out from their campus to march on tandem and

square. you shall both literally plunged into the movement which had begun 10 days earlier and continued to grow he spent several days and even nights in tiananmen square and beijing's hearts close to the seat of chinese power. the literary critic embraced his role as a political activist aware he was part of a huge historic change but it was a movement initiated and conducted by inexperienced students and the professor felt compelled to offer a structure sharp criticism and guidance. was one of the most important advisor to the 1989 student movement and we were looking for guidance we were looking for teachers and he took the.

task. piano once where the students had begun a hunger strike eclipsing the historic visit by soviet leader mikhail gorbachev. the leadership of the chinese communist party was torn between partisans of the strong arm and those who favored negotiation. the decision fell to the aged leader danger shelving he declared martial law and mobilized the army. the reformist leader of the party recognize the danger was near he went to the square to plead with the students orders and despite the tears of the general secretary of the party the hardliners won the square was to be emptied and violently. you show

both saw that danger was imminent and with 3 others started a hunger strike to demands nonviolence both from the students and also from the army which was already stationed around the city. to them but the whole generation really wanted to show that we were turning our backs on the communist party through the marxist leninist parties in power and especially the chinese communist party and proclaiming that power grows out of the barrel of a gun and that they backed violent struggle because nonviolence was for us a way of expressing a total breakdown from party ideology and switch engine. during the evening of the 3rd of june 1990 the people's liberation army advanced to the

city the massacre began at each pocket of resistance. people in the street were riddled with bullets. they were shot down in the universities. tiananmen square in the heart of beijing was the army's final goal it was to be completely empty by morning. the students were divided into 2 camps some sort of peace the more radical members wanted to stay instead down the army. i asked the students who were on the monument to come down and i collected a few friends to help me we had to avoid violence that i wanted to talk to the students about avoiding violence. i thought if you don't i'll whip who show will

also say he tried and you take things and they're. his own responsibility ok he will go you carry a white flag or walk to the soldiers or shooting. you go she. that's who he is. believes his own responsibility. on the good day good after we negotiated with beyond the return to the middle of the squared up to ask the students to draw you. in to the last scene that i remember just before the students had all gradually left the square towards the southeast through the opening left by the army travel.

when the 4th of june july and tiananmen square was a devastated battlefield but according to witnesses an even greater calamity was avoided thanks to professor yoo and his comrades. although it went down in history as the tiananmen square massacre the killing happened all over the city also in neighborhoods where students took refuge. shelters rang out for several more days on the streets of beijing. family searched for their loved ones today the figures the still impossible to know several hundreds old thousands died. of to the next day the 5th of june 1809 tanks patrolled tiananmen square and a lone figure became. the symbol of the chinese people's resistance to

a dictatorship with blood on its hands. the regime was searching for leadership the little man did one teenager says my television. many fled to prove. you shall both had no intention of following. i was arrested on june 6th 2 days after the massacre. arrested me as i arrived home on my bicycle.

i was halfway there when i saw a minibus suddenly arriving several men sprang out of it. teached my bike. they blindfolded me they gagged to me. then they threw me into their car. while he was in the reeducation camps he had lots of free time city that you need his 1st experience of prison allowed him time to think about his past experiences and to reflect on the future of china. he also took advantage of that time to read some remarkable works. it's well known that for many political prisoners prison experience is really like a new university in the sense that was leo shabbos case. his

1st prison sentence also marked a turning point in you shall boast personal life while he was still a student he had married. in 1902 the couple had a son aged 6 in 1909 after 6 months in jail his wife filed for divorce shall bore would never again see his son who later left with his mother to live in the united states. there are a couple of your go before it was a reasonable choice with a child to be brought up week off as for me looking back i said to myself that i wasn't up to the challenge bush on the show would you go the world with my personal choices made things quite difficult for them and i still beg their forgiveness. for they go beyond our community and his friends noted the changes in his personality they are going they too showed the emotional scars of the 4th of june

we all do me included he was full of remorse and seemed haunted by the ghosts of the victims of channa meant square man do it from a veil or a serious trigger give them a call so for the dead to try to do them historical justice i thought it was best to stay here to keep the ghosts company. that was the main reason that i stayed in china true to. the end you shall bowe was released from prison in 1991 china was changing around him aging leader dating shopping who had had the students shows and retired after having launched to a full miss with the slogan to get rich is glorious. jenkins' them in and a generation of leaders from shanghai decided that china should shake up the economy major projects rang up everywhere in the country opened up to foreign business. you shall bow was no longer the bleeding heart intellectual of the 80s he

had lost his post at the university and he no longer had the right to publish in china. with his friends the poets yell he knew he looked for a new role among beijing's intellectuals. use our specialty at that time with new sharp borders petitions we love petitions he once he never stopped writing political petitions which were often more or less about the tiananmen square massacre so he showed the time there were no computers everything had to be sent by fax you another you may get high so there are often not all that many signatures on the petition and. obviously i never knew exactly how many use condoms but many are not they were not enough to stop us from being systematically arrested the following day. jeans are can you are a bug it's was a. so you shall bow found himself implicated in

a host of disputes in the ninety's his activism won him several periods of detention or reeducation. in 1995 he was arrested while preparing a new petition to recognise the tiananmen square massacre another 6 months deprivation of freedom. in 1906 he was sent to reeducation camp for 3 years in the north of china. it was in the canteen of the camp that he married a new shah an artist and poets who shared his ideal of freedom. while he was serving his sentence the chinese regime gave him a proposition president clinton was to visit beijing you shall bow and his wife could leave china immediately with the american president coming over to chill bottlers 998. we want to see him and president if you actually thought the

authorities told him he could leave. the replied well i'm not going to if you had sentenced me to 8 or 10 years in prison yeah maybe i would have chosen to leave but on this case they only gave me 3 years now will be out next year i mean able so i choose to stay knowledge of what. you show boat was released in 999 later in 2001 the international and limpid committee approved beijing's bid to host the 2008 olympic games past. was china was about to belong to the w t o the big cities discovered well for this race the development strengthened getting shelled those convictions. in july 2001 he created the chinese branch of the most important international association of writers the pen club which defends freedom of speech all over the world. to the show where the at that time

life was much better than it had been on the mountain don't you put on or even during the eighties and was a lot about social progress the overall system heigho a man's life is not just about money and it. was then a fashionable young intellectual just as you shall board being in the 80s he made the risky decision to join the pen club. you shall bow also hope to make the pen club a platform to help us study and apply democracy to our lives it was all for example our management committee had 11 members and met on the internet once a month to debate many questions during the so we numbered years a. splitting involved with this writer's club them he also wanted to show the new literature resulting from the tiananmen square massacre and bottles of the he wanted to. remote

a new group of writers without any chance for truth you saw them in the footsteps of soldier needs some one of those x. soviet union writers under the yoke of the communist party who resisted from within the shadows. and us that she that he thought it was the same thing that you had to keep fighting show the reality soley by the testimony he thought that this witness literature was fundamental because of her cousin were to go to see young. you shall bow paid the price for his activism government agents in plain clothes but not exactly in conspicuous now camped outside his home his telephone was tapped his internet connection was filtered. in his beijing apartments he was now living under house arrest. you know there's no i'm completely controlled my telephone my computer etc. they follow me all the time and nowadays it's not like

it was in the ninety's in the ninety's when they followed us they hid themselves so that we didn't see them that if you turned around suddenly you could catch them trying to hide. but today they do it openly. they want you to know that you are being followed your sometimes even though they are right beside me you could almost have a conversation with them we all got it. passed on the 8th of august 2008 beijing seemed stronger than ever. the city had become the center of the world lab aging and subject to the old protests the infix would be the crowning glory. the.

the you shall both took what advantage he could trim the olympics to that he met foreign journalists and more and more regularly he organized discreet meetings on the streets of the old city the university professors and even officials more or less close to the party could be found the. usual had a new project based on the model of chartist 77 drafted by votes not that the last president of czechoslovakia. would you it also would be useful to holland to anybody and on the whole i remember that at that time we always met in a restaurant to talk it had to be a friend's restaurant because we couldn't discuss anything on the internet or on the phone or use so we always invited friends to join us and that restaurant if i remember correctly we must have made a good dozen times to have dinner we invited different people each time one time it

would be academics the next it would be writers and then lawyers who adored ya sure as they all came to discuss charter 8 with us paul and then he might handle. 2 weeks of intense and secret debates among the intellectuals they drafted the new chance in one scene spanning from the independence of justice to freedom of speech and religion. is a professor of economy at beijing university he took part in these intense debates but felt that you shall be taxed wasn't radical enough. personally are not so for you agree with his points but at the time i think everybody should have some compromise and then agree on that because this version is very peaceful that's no. very strong words. but that's no measuring subversion of the government or anything

like that so i don't think the people who signed this would have the very serious results. you shall both text received 303 sigma she has officials manages of state enterprises university heads it was an unexpected success the charter was to be published on the 10th of december 2008 international human rights day but the all surtees caught wind of the plans new shell ball and several other signatories like u.g.a. were arrested 48 hours before publication but when you go in if you wrote an article by your own fireside it didn't worry them if you are good but if several 100 people met together to sign it that terrified them. to go up when with charter 8 leo szabo showed that he was not just an intellectual dissident he showed that he was also capable of organizing a movement and mustering opposition forces and including inside the heart of your

system if i can the younger you go jodee. arrested on the 8th of december you showed was arbitrarily detained for several months before his trial in december 2009 before intermediary court number one in beijing. the trial was held on camera. the dissidents friends were kept at a distance by police who had cordoned off the courthouse. i think it was just 2 days later on the 25th of december 2009 you shall bow was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion of state power. the date was not chosen by chance beijing hopes that on christmas day foreign media and diplomats would be less likely to gather at the tribunals. alone in front of his judges you

shall bow read along declaration freedom of expression is not a crime he said. he repeated what he had said in tiananmen square i have no enemies his principle of nonviolence. 2 weeks later in the course of oslo the letter reached the nobel prize committee it was signed by that's not harvard it suggested that the nobel prize should be awarded to the imprisoned chinese dissident. intellectuals from all over the world joined in this a pail on the 8th of october 2010 the norwegian nobel committee announced its choice. you shall bow didn't know that he had won the nobel prize he remained in

his cell in the north of china while the foreign media crowded around the residence of his wife lucia in beijing where the many of his friends wrote and new wave of optimism. i think one party dictatorship would be and it was in 10 years i'm very optimistic about that how bad our partner was and i think that this optimism didn't last long. the gates closes yet again in just a few hours you shah was under house arrest heard if you don't know about us or your heart or by the other neither did i married him or you on the day of the nobel prize presentation it was midday in beijing answered arguing are you detroit police came knocking at my door to you and they're going to talk to you 2 policemen rushed at me and put a black sack over my head so how many young you know he tortured me in several ways 3 that lasted 8 or 9 hours until dark and i fell into a coma. he will do. now they took me to the hospital because i think the higher ups

had not given an order to kill me just to make sure i was tortured for not some more years are. in this video by the chinese penitentiary administration we can see visiting the. that is how she told him about the nobel prize that is how she learned that he was ill gravely ill with liver cancer the propaganda video was supposed to demonstrate that you shell boy was being well cared for he was shown being examined by several doctors even while his health deteriorated. faced with international pressure the regime allowed foreign doctors to visit his bedside but it was all a sham and it was too late if you shall both died on the 13th of july 2017 after 9 years of prison. without.

the international community preferred to keep its eyes closed or something toward all the countries are mainly concerned with maintaining good trade relations with china to fund the whole world dreamed of one thing making money dealing with the chinese market so there was no interest in democracy or even human rights watch says she and her mandela the whole world mobilized to. censor you shall call it was a sordid murder in front of the whole world who says in china it was a death before the eyes of the entire world and nobody cared i turned to. the chinese regime organized a well orchestrated funeral. the whole of you shall both family was summoned by the authorities. official propaganda tried to control both the image and the legacy of the nobel prize winner for. the regime ordered that his ashes should be scattered at sea. to avoid having

a place to memorialize the you shall bow. in china you shall those name is censored when internet users began referring to an empty chair at the time was also a sense that. in 2008 the last time we met him you shall bow knew what lay ahead a few weeks later he would disappear imprisoned until he died he left us these last words to understand his freedom. awards to them i think that i made the right choices. of course the consequences are important for me but in any case that's how we live in china there is a price to pay for from there if you don't choose my sort of life

a life that most people consider to be too hard and too risky then you won't pay the price that i pay for any offshore but if you're one who thinks you still have to pay a price a certain price and i get that for example you'll be obliged to lie you have to follow the dominant ideology to obtain and maintain a good income a good job there were impossible then to be concerned about the deaths of the 4th of june impossible to make the slightest criticism of the government from impossible in fact to express the tiniest authentic opinion. and all that for want to evade it for a materially comfortable life. well i prefer to pay the high price of danger rather than become someone who lives a lie rather than become someone who disowns his own conscience. for for their group which is if they are that's a. the

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