How to Violate Human Rights? Liao Yiwu of China Has a Tale to Tell

How to Violate Human Rights? Liao Yiwu of China Has a Tale to Tell

brotee mukhopadhyay

Believe it or not, Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and forty eight other writers are, at present, in the Chinese jail or have been arrested or have been interned. Liao Yiwu, a poet and author of contemporary China is one of them. He is not in the good book of communist China, especially from the day when he has taken side with the protesters during the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Chinese authority has not recently allowed Liao Yiwu to attend Sydney Writers' festival in Australia. He has not been allowed to attend New York event of PEN in April last. An empty chair was placed in that event to tell the tale of his absence. A ‘blatant violation of China's obligations to guarantee freedom of movement and expression’ is what Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie has said on this occasion.

Liao Yiwu does not consider him as a dissident. He feels happy as a poet and as an author. The Chinese government censors his writings or bans them, but his works have been translated into German, Japanese, English, Spanish and French. ‘Words alone cannot express my outrage’, he writes in an e-mail to his friends PEN. He could not attend international literary festivals for fourteen times since 2008, because he has not received permission from the government. In March last, in Chengdu, he was forced to come down from a plane.

The facts stated above are enough to understand that people of China do not have freedom of speech and freedom of movement which have been accepted all over the world as basic fundamental rights.

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Liao Yiwu was born in 1958 in Sichuan. A few of his works are the following:

1) Massacre [This is a book of poems depicting his feelings on the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He was imprisoned for four months for writing these poems.]

2) Requiem [This is a movie on the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He along with his friends has made this movie.]

3) The Fall of the Holy Temple (1998)

4) Interviews with the Lower Strata of Chinese Society

5) The Corpse Walker (2002)

6) China's Unjust Court Cases (2003)

7) China's Unjust Court Cases (2005)

8) The Last of China's Landlords (2008)

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An email of Liao Yiwu addressed to his friends

April 1, 2011

Friends:

I originally planned to leave for the United States on April 4 in order to make a publicity tour for my book God is Red which will be published in English translation by Harper Collins and for my book The Corpse Walker which was published by Random House.

Unexpectedly, on March 28th, the police issued an order forbidding me to leave China.

I had originally planned to travel to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington and other cities and to give lectures, readings and musical performances at Harvard, Yale and other universities as well as participate in the New York Literary Festival where I was to make a speech and perform, and to have a dialogue with writers from around the world on the theme "Contemporary Writer and Bearing Witness to History". Now all this has been canceled.

My new book is also going to be published in Australia. My plan to travel from the United States to Australia has also been canceled.

Ever since my return from Germany last year, I have been closely monitored. The police have "invited me to drink tea" many times. My writing has been repeatedly interrupted.

I have once again been forbidden to travel abroad for national security reasons.

Over the last ten or so years I have strived to get the right to travel abroad 16 times. I succeeded once and failed 15 times.

Thank you all for your concern for me over the years.

Liao Yiwu