China’s Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo dies: official

Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has died, the government of the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, where he was being treated for late-stage liver cancer, said.

The Shenyang legal bureau said in a brief statement on its website on Thursday that Liu had suffered multiple organ failure and efforts to save him had failed.

Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms.

He came to prominence following the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which he called the “major turning point” in his life.

He was awarded the Nobel prize in 2010 and was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony in Oslo.

The ruling Communist Party considered Liu’s writings subversive and imprisoned him four times.

He was recently moved from jail to a hospital in Shenyang.

Earlier on Thursday, China resisted fresh international pleas to let Liu seek treatment abroad after the latest hospital updates suggested the democracy champion was close to death.

Source: Al Jazeera