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A portrait of Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017), a witness of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), a dissident, a woodpecker who tirelessly pecked the putrid brain of the Communist regime for decades, demanding democracy loudly and fearlessly. Silenced, arrested, convicted, imprisoned, dead. Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2010, alive forever. These are his last words.
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00:00People came to tell us, they're killing students down there, they're killing students, and
00:21afterwards we could neither enter nor leave the square, it was cordoned off by the army.
00:30To avoid a bloodbath, I smashed a rifle, a semi-automatic, on the stele.
01:00I know that I was lucky to survive the spring events in Beijing while others died in the
01:13massacre.
01:14I've always had a feeling of culpability and responsibility, because not only are they
01:23dead, but the government won't face up to what happened in Tiananmen Square.
01:29These images are the last that we filmed of Lu Xiaobo.
01:57A discreet meeting, as always, to avoid police surveillance.
02:04An hour of conversation in a Beijing suburb in the year that the city hosted the Olympic
02:10Games.
02:11Lu Xiaobo, in 2008, was the most eminent of the Chinese dissidents, one of the heroes of
02:17Tiananmen Square.
02:18Tiananmen Square.
02:19It was he who stood up to the Beijing regime, he who protected the students.
02:25This is the story of the man who defied Beijing.
02:31A few weeks after this meeting, his life would be changed once more.
02:36The Chinese regime would make him disappear for good.
02:40For the calm man with whom we shared tea was not content in the year 2008 to recount his memories
02:47of the Beijing Spring.
02:49In great secrecy with hundreds of intellectuals, he drew up Charter 08, which demanded the democratisation
02:55of China.
02:57A text that was to make him once again the regime's enemy number one, and which would earn
03:03him universal recognition.
03:06The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo
03:15for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.
03:25He had won the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela.
03:31But Liu Xiaobo languished in a Chinese prison.
03:34So in Oslo, the Nobel Prize is officially awarded to an empty chair.
03:41It is time to let this chair, this silent Nobel Prize, speak.
03:50We have crossed several continents to find those close to him, his fellow travellers,
03:54and the places that marked his journey.
03:59A journey through the whole of recent Chinese history.
04:03A journey of courage and truth.
04:08A journey that Beijing does all it can to eradicate from our memory.
04:12It was in Beijing in the middle of the 1980s that Liu Xiaobo made his first public appearance.
04:25The 1980s were a period of incredible freedom for the Chinese, who turned the page on Maoism.
04:33The country began to open up to the world and to copy some of the new enthusiasms.
04:42On the campus of the prestigious Normal University in the capital, Liu Xiaobo was a young Chinese man doing literary research.
04:52His colleagues knew about his frank views.
05:04But for his American translator Perry Link, it was at a convention in 1986 that the young intellectual changed dimension.
05:11There was a conference in Beijing to celebrate the ten years of the new period, so-called, in Chinese literature.
05:24To show that we've improved so much since Mao Zedong.
05:28And it was a good idea and a good conference.
05:30But Liu Xiaobo was one of the young participants there.
05:34And that's the first place at which he sort of threw a fire bomb.
05:40I remember that one of my colleagues attended that conference.
05:43When he returned, he told me a dark horse appeared.
05:47And imitating his typical stammer, he described how Liu Xiaobo had provided a critique like contemporary Chinese literature, like antique culture, is a pile of garbage.
06:08That made him hugely visible.
06:11And in the years 87, 88, 89, Liu Xiaobo was a star.
06:17When Liu Xiaobo went to speak at the university, they fought to attend.
06:21You couldn't get into the amphitheaters.
06:33At the start, my thinking was very simple.
06:36I hoped to be capable of becoming an authentic person, someone worthy.
06:42But inside a political system like the one in China, if you are an intellectual, you're going to have to express your own ideas.
06:49You have to write essays.
06:50And conflict with the government will be inevitable.
06:57In 1986, Liu Xiaobo had become a star in Chinese intellectual life.
07:02Yet, the young researcher had never been to school before going to the university.
07:18He was born in 1955 in Changchun, in the cold, industrial northeast of China, on the borders of Russia, North Korea and Mongolia.
07:27Liu Xiaobo's father was a professor of literature and deeply communist.
07:34But that didn't protect his family during the cultural revolution that Mao triggered in 1966.
07:41We have to make a clean break with the past, cried the great helmsman's red guards who inflicted their violence everywhere.
07:56Teachers like Liu Xiaobo's father had become the enemies of the people.
08:05Mao closed all the schools in the country.
08:10Liu Xiaobo was only 11 years old.
08:13The young boy had nothing to do all day.
08:18He was too young to be a red guard like his elder brothers.
08:21So he spent his time in reading more and more.
08:31His family had managed to keep a large number of books, particularly foreign editions, even when they were sent to Inner Mongolia for re-education.
08:38Living conditions were very difficult, but with no school and no constraints, Liu Xiaobo was a happy child, enjoying great freedom.
08:52Su Yu Yun, the Chinese philosopher, was a red guard at the time.
08:59He has become one of his country's most celebrated liberal intellectuals.
09:05And he was one of those who wrote to the Nobel Prize Committee to plead for Liu Xiaobo.
09:10In 1968, when Mao Zedong exiled us by force to live in the country, just because we were educated youth, it was a shock.
09:20The misery and mental deficiency that I found in the country taught me that the Chinese social system was nothing like Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
09:27The socialist system was not as superior as they made out.
09:39After his adolescence, Liu Xiaobo became a house painter in his village, Changchung, the ancient capital of Manchuria that is now a huge metropolis with seven million inhabitants.
09:52So, the young Chinese man never went to school.
09:55He was self-taught.
09:57That is one of the paradoxes of the Cultural Revolution.
10:00By closing the schools, Mao Zedong may have lost control of part of the Chinese intellect, as they had to create their own methods of thinking.
10:18While I was still young, I read a great many books, especially French literature.
10:23For example, Zola's Jacuzze.
10:28The role of public intellectual that Zola assumed in France had a profound influence on intellectuals in China.
10:36Instead of writing their own literary works, they were also preoccupied with the important public affairs of their time.
10:43Still today, intellectuals in China can invoke the name of Zola.
10:47In 1976, the death of Mao put an end to the Cultural Revolution.
11:00A year later, the Chinese universities reopened their doors.
11:07Liu Xiaobo enrolled in Changchun University, plunging avidly into a sea of knowledge that had been denied him.
11:1325 years old, with his diploma in his pocket, he left his region of birth to go to the capital, there to become the young phenomenon of Chinese intellectual life.
11:26Beijing, at the end of the 80s, breathed freedom, so far from the countryside where Liu Xiaobo grew up.
11:41In the center of the capital, the new international library was a magnet for youth.
11:48They went there to express their desires and new dreams.
11:51I like French literature. I'm a fan of Moliere and of Maupassant.
12:03I plan to study in the United States, so I look especially for books to perfect my English, which isn't very good.
12:12Liu Xiaobo finished his thesis devoted to aesthetic and human freedom.
12:17A freedom for which he was already the champion amongst Chinese intellectuals.
12:22He was 33, and now wished to discover the West, whose literature had nourished his youth.
12:31In the summer of 1988, as the first American fast food outlet came to Beijing, Liu Xiaobo set off in the opposite direction.
12:38On the way to America, his first stop was in Hong Kong, where he discovered a different China, a modern China, a China with respect for freedom.
12:51Then he went to Oslo. His first contact with the West turned sour.
13:06He was bored stiff and angry with the Sinologists at the Norwegian University, whom he treated as usurpers.
13:12At last, in autumn 1988, he landed in New York.
13:19Andrew Nathan, doyen of the Chinese studies at the prestigious University of Columbia, offered him a post as visiting professor.
13:25I don't think the university at that level or the, much less the US government or anybody, had any plans for this guy.
13:36It was just that somebody asked me to invite him and he was curious and wanted to come over.
13:40We, certainly it's true that in the United States at that time, we were pretty optimistic about the direction of China.
13:48You know, Deng Xiaoping had come here, he had put on a cowboy hat.
13:52You know, we believed, it's funny to think about this now in retrospect as we talk about it, but we thought China was on the road to some form of Chinese democracy.
14:04So we were certainly interested in having exchanges with, you know, Chinese intellect.
14:10But in this particular case, he was not part of any big game plan. It was his idea to come here.
14:19Many young Chinese intellectuals lived in New York during the cold start to 1989.
14:29There was the young Ai Weiwei, who is now world renowned in contemporary art.
14:35There was also the poet, Bei Ling, who had come to New York some months earlier, and who agreed to put up Liu Xiaobo.
14:42He said, Bei Ling, you can host me? I said, yes, you can stay at my place. Then we go into airport to pick up him.
14:50I still remember several Chinese distant with me going there to pick up him together, because he's already well known outside.
14:57In my apartment every night in New York have so many Chinese distant. So we always can see each other outside or in my renting apartment living room.
15:12This little community of Chinese intellectual expats lived in the Queens district of New York.
15:22Liu Xiaobo was fascinated by the bookshops, museums and art galleries.
15:32In March, he visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the most important museums in the world, situated close to Central Park.
15:43He himself has written about going to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, seeing these wonderful, huge paintings, and starting to feel almost in an existential sense that human life is incomplete, including Western life.
16:04We still have to measure China against these international standards. But my second task is, I have to have a critical attitude toward the standard itself. The West is not a model, it's a bag of its own problems.
16:20While Liu Xiaobo was in New York, Hu Yaobang, the former Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party, died of a heart attack on the 15th of April 1989 in Beijing.
16:37He had been made to resign two years earlier, pushed out by the more conservative elements of the regime.
16:43For Hu Yaobang had been the architect of the opening up of China in the 80s.
16:50In the universities, posters were immediately put up in homage to this father of reform.
16:58Small groups of students gathered, and some of them converged on Tiananmen Square towards the end of the day.
17:06Two days later, on the evening of the 17th of April, a new assembly was organised on the square.
17:12This time, there were nearly 3,000 students, and they presented an initial list of demands.
17:17They went from the reinstatement of Hu Yaobang's vision of democracy, and the fight against corruption, right up to the suppression of censorship.
17:23.
17:30.
17:35.
17:39.
17:43In New York, Liu Xiaobo followed the events from the apartment of Hu Ping, the eldest of a small group of exiled Chinese dissidents.
17:54Liu Xiaobo very soon understood that this was the start of a great movement towards democracy.
18:00We decided on a joint publication of both open letters and declarations of our points of view.
18:06At that time, things were very different from today. There was no Internet.
18:10Most people in China didn't even have a telephone.
18:13So we had to fax our declarations to Beijing.
18:17Our friends in Beijing took them and posted them all over the city, including the university, on the famous Triangle of Democracy.
18:24And we were told that our text had raised a lot of interest.
18:34On the 22nd of April, during Hu Yaobang's official funeral, the students once more invaded Tiananmen Square.
18:43The party leaders, gathered in the Great Hall of the People, started to worry.
18:49Before the 4th of June, Liu Xiaobo had acquired a position of leader among the thinking Chinese intellectuals.
19:04He knew that if he didn't soon return to China, he would exclude himself and lose that status.
19:11So, his political ambitions also clearly backed his decision.
19:16If you all come back, maybe that time is the most important moment, maybe you can change China.
19:23So, only him say, OK, you can buy tickets now.
19:29Me and Hu Ping, we both are a little bit worried if we go back to China, maybe dangerous.
19:41On the 27th of April, 1989, although the authorities hardened their attitude,
19:46tens of thousands of students set out from their campus to march to Tiananmen Square.
19:50When Liu Xiaobo arrived in the Chinese capital, he wanted to meet the leader of the movement at once.
19:59He was taken to the campus where Wu Kai-si lived,
20:02and who had just been elected as president of the Students' Autonomous Federation.
20:09Liu Xiaobo is an iconic name to all students in China at that time already.
20:14And there he is, knocking on the door of my dorm and looking for me.
20:19However, I was in my dorm, having an emergency meeting with student leaders from different universities.
20:28I'd say, well, Liu Xiaobo or not, I have to shut you out.
20:31So, no, you cannot come in.
20:35I think I will probably shut down God himself if he was knocking the door.
20:40At that moment in the meeting, it seems to be more important than anything.
20:46But, of course, right after the meeting, right after the meeting, I was so agitated to say,
20:53that was Liu Xiaobo, I want to go to find him.
20:57And then we went to his place, his little dorm in campus,
21:02and knocked on the door and we sat down and we talked.
21:06Immediately, we became very good friends.
21:09Liu Xiaobo literally plunged into the movement which had begun ten days earlier and was constantly growing.
21:20He spent several days and even nights in Tiananmen Square,
21:24which had been transformed into a huge agora in the heart of Beijing,
21:28close to the seat of Chinese power.
21:31The literary critic changed progressively into a political activist,
21:35feeling that he was living a major historic change for the Chinese people.
21:42But it was a movement initiated and conducted by students,
21:45and as the professor that he was,
21:47he sometimes treated the young, inexperienced leaders severely.
21:50He was one of the most successful people.
22:14He was one of the most important advisers to the 1989 student movement, and we were looking
22:26for guidance, we were looking for teachers, and he took that role.
22:36On Tiananmen Square, the students had begun a hunger strike, eclipsing the historic visit
22:41from the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
22:51The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was torn between partisans of the strong arm
22:55and those who favored negotiation.
23:00The decision fell to the aged leader, Deng Xiaoping.
23:05He declared martial law and mobilized the army.
23:08Xiao Xiaoyang, the reformist leader of the party, recognized that danger was near.
23:14He went to the square to plead with the students.
23:18Despite the tears of the secretary general of the party, the hard-liners won.
23:28Dave, you are an international member of the army.
23:33Despite the tears of the secretary-general of the party, the hardliners won.
23:49The regime decided to use force to evacuate the square.
23:52Yu Sao Bo saw that danger was imminent, and with three other personalities started a hunger strike to demand non-violence, both from the students and also from the army, which was already stationed around the city.
24:22Our generation really wanted to show that we were turning our backs on the Communist Party.
24:50The Marxist-Leninist Party is in power, and most especially the Chinese Communist Party, proclaiming that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and they backed violent struggle.
25:02Non-violence was, for us, a way of expressing a total break from party ideology.
25:10During the evening of the 3rd of June 1989, the People's Liberation Army invested the Chinese capital.
25:16The massacre began at each pocket of resistance.
25:20People were shot down in the streets.
25:32They were shot down in the universities.
25:40Tiananmen Square, in the heart of Beijing, was the army's final objective.
25:45The order was to clear it by the following morning.
25:47The students were divided in two, some sought peace.
25:57The more radical members wanted to stay and face up to the army.
26:00I asked these students who were on the monument to calm down, and I collected a few friends to help me.
26:10We had to avoid violence.
26:12I wanted to talk to the students about avoiding violence.
26:16Liu Xiaobo wants to save life.
26:18He tried.
26:18And he took things under his own responsibility.
26:26He will go.
26:27He will carry a white flag and walk to the soldiers who are shooting.
26:32And he will negotiate way out.
26:35That's who he is.
26:37He believes his own responsibility.
26:40After the negotiations, we returned to the middle of the square to ask the students to draw back.
26:55In the end, the last scene that I remember, just before dawn, the students had all gradually left the square towards the southeast, through the opening left by the army.
27:04When the 4th of June dawned, Tiananmen Square was a ruined battlefield.
27:28But according to all the witnesses, an even greater calamity was avoided thanks to Professor Liu and his comrades.
27:34What we know as the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened all round, in the city streets and in the neighbourhoods where students took refuge.
27:48Shooting was heard for several more days in the Beijing streets.
27:54Families searched for their loved ones.
27:57Today, the figures are still impossible to know.
28:00Several hundreds or several thousands died.
28:04The next day, the 5th of June, 1989, while tanks patrolled Tiananmen Square, a man alone became the symbol of the Chinese people's resistance to a dictatorship that had Beijing's blood on its hands.
28:21The hope of a family trees is not wounded.
28:22That's what points can happen.
28:34For others.
28:39The leaders of the Tiananmen Square movement were pursued by the regime, which posted wanted notices via television.
28:57Many fled abroad.
28:59Liu Xiaobo had no intention of following them.
29:09I was arrested on June the 6th, two days after the massacre.
29:14They arrested me as I arrived home on my bicycle.
29:18I was halfway there when I saw a minibus suddenly arriving.
29:21Several men sprang out of it.
29:26They ditched my bike.
29:27They blindfolded me.
29:29They gagged me.
29:30Then they threw me into their car.
29:39While he was in the re-education camp, he had lots of free time.
29:46His first experience of prison allowed him time to think about his past experiences and to reflect on the future of China.
29:54He also took advantage of that time to read some remarkable works.
29:59It's well known that for many political prisoners, prison experience is really like a new university.
30:05And that was Liu Xiaobo's case.
30:13But his first prison sentence also marked a turning point in Liu Xiaobo's personal life.
30:19While he was still a student, he had married Tao Li in 1982.
30:24The couple had a son aged 6 in 1989.
30:27After six months in jail, his wife filed for divorce.
30:31Liu Xiaobo would never again see his son,
30:34who later left with his mother to live in the United States.
30:44After they'd arrested me, the authorities wanted to make an example of me.
30:49On the national television news, they broadcast a long report about me on the lines of,
30:53we have arrested Liu Xiaobo, the mafioso.
30:56Everyone outside my friends and family thought I was going to be shot,
31:04or at least to be given a very heavy prison sentence.
31:06I completely understand the choice my ex-wife made.
31:17In that terrible atmosphere following the 4th of June,
31:20she thought that a divorce would be the best for our child and for herself.
31:25It was a reasonable choice with a child to be brought up.
31:29As for me, looking back, I said to myself that I wasn't up to the challenge.
31:35My personal choices caused them an awful lot of trouble and constraints,
31:39and I still beg their forgiveness.
31:41The changes in his personality were clearly visible.
31:53Many of his friends noted that,
31:55and they showed the marks of the 4th of June.
31:58We all do, me as well.
31:59I still have the scars of the 4th of June.
32:01He was full of remorse.
32:03He seemed to be haunted by the ghosts of the victims of Tiananmen Square.
32:06So, for the dead, to try to do them historical justice,
32:14I thought it was best to stay here, to keep their ghosts company.
32:19That was the main reason that I stayed in China.
32:28Lu Xiaobo was released in 1991.
32:31China was changing around him.
32:33The aged Deng Xiaoping, who had had students shot,
32:36retired after having launched reforms with the slogan
32:39to get rich is glorious.
32:42Jiang Zemin and a generation of leaders who came from Shanghai
32:45decided that China should shake up the economy.
32:49Major projects sprang up everywhere.
32:51The country opened up to foreign business.
32:58Lu Xiaobo was no longer the flamboyant intellectual of the 80s.
33:02He lost his post at the university,
33:04and he no longer had the right to publish in China.
33:10With his friend, the poet Liao Yiwu,
33:13he looked for a new role among Beijing's intellectuals.
33:15Our speciality at that time with Yu Xiaobo was petitions.
33:25We loved petitions.
33:27He never stopped writing political petitions,
33:30which were mainly about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
33:35At that time, there were no computers.
33:38Everything had to be sent by fax.
33:40So there were often not all that many signatures on the petitions.
33:45Obviously, I never knew exactly how many,
33:48but many or not,
33:49that didn't stop us being systematically arrested the following day.
33:57So, Lu Xiaobo found himself implicated
34:00in a host of disputes in the 1990s.
34:02His activism won him several periods of detention, or re-education.
34:10In 1995, he was arrested while preparing a new petition
34:14to recognise the Tiananmen Square massacre,
34:17six months' deprivation of freedom.
34:21In 1996, he was sent for three years
34:23to a re-education camp in the north of China.
34:26It was in the canteen of the camp that he married Liu Xia,
34:32an intellectual and poetess who shared his ideal of freedom.
34:40While he was serving his sentence,
34:42the Chinese regime made him a proposition.
34:45President Clinton was to visit Beijing.
34:47Liu Xiaobo and his wife could leave China
34:50immediately with the American president.
34:52It was in 1998.
34:58We went to see him in prison.
35:00The authorities told him he could leave.
35:03Liu Xiaobo replied,
35:04I am not going.
35:06If you had sentenced me to eight or ten years in prison,
35:09maybe I would have chosen to leave.
35:11But in this case, they only gave me three years.
35:13I'll be out next year, so I choose to stay.
35:22Liu Xiaobo was released in 1999.
35:25At the start of the 2000s,
35:27the International Olympic Committee came to Beijing
35:29to attribute the 2008 Olympic Games.
35:36China was about to belong to the WTO.
35:40The big cities discovered wealth.
35:42This race for development strengthened Liu Xiaobo's convictions.
35:45In July 2001, he created the Chinese branch
35:51of the most important international association of writers,
35:54the Pen Club,
35:56which defends freedom of speech all over the world.
36:00At that time, life was much better
36:05than it had been under Mao Zedong,
36:07or even during the 80s.
36:08A man's life is not just about money, is it?
36:21Man is not satisfied just to have enough to eat
36:24and clothes to warm himself.
36:26He has other sorts of needs.
36:29Some of my friends and colleagues from that time got rich.
36:33Nowadays, they drive big cars and live in grand houses.
36:37It would be difficult to be sure
36:39that they led a better life than mine,
36:41at least where peace of mind is concerned.
36:48Liu Xiaobo was then a fashionable young intellectual,
36:51something like Liu Xiaobo had been in the 80s.
36:53He took the risky decision to join the Pen Club.
36:59Liu Xiaobo also hoped to make the Pen Club
37:02a platform to help us study and apply democracy to our lives.
37:07For example, our management committee had 11 members
37:11and met on the Internet once a month
37:13to debate many questions.
37:15In fact, we had very lively debates,
37:17very passionate.
37:19For example, how to organize a meeting.
37:22Because, in reality,
37:24all these Chinese intellectuals,
37:26fervent about democracy,
37:28still didn't know how to organize a meeting properly.
37:30Getting involved with this writers' club,
37:37he also wanted to show this new literature
37:39resulting from the Tiananmen Square massacre.
37:43He wanted to promote a group of new writers.
37:47He saw them in the footsteps of Solzhenitsyn,
37:50one of those ex-Soviet Union writers
37:52under the yoke of the Communist Party
37:54who resisted from within the shadows.
37:56He thought it was the same thing,
37:59that you had to keep fighting,
38:01show the reality solely by testimony.
38:04He thought that this witness literature was fundamental.
38:13Liu Xiaobo paid the price for his activism.
38:16Government agents in plain clothes,
38:18but not really discreet,
38:20now camped outside his home.
38:22His telephone was tapped.
38:23His internet connection was filtered.
38:29In his Beijing apartment,
38:30he was now living under house arrest.
38:36I'm completely controlled.
38:38My telephone, my computer, etc.
38:41They follow me all the time.
38:44And nowadays, it is not like it was in the 90s.
38:47In the 90s, when they followed you,
38:48they hid themselves so that we didn't see them.
38:51If you turned around,
38:52suddenly you could catch them trying to hide.
38:55But today, they do it openly.
38:57They want you to know you're being followed.
39:02Sometimes, even,
39:03they are right beside me.
39:05You could almost have a conversation with them.
39:07on the 8th of August, 2008,
39:25Beijing seemed stronger than ever.
39:28The city had become the centre of the world.
39:31Beijing had subdued all protests.
39:33The Olympics would be their crowning glory.
39:37Ladies and gentlemen,
39:38I pray for you to raise your national anthem.
39:50Louis Yaubo took what advantage he could
39:52from the time of the Olympics.
39:54He met foreign journalists.
39:55And, moreover,
39:56more and more regularly,
39:58he organised discreet meetings
39:59in the streets of the old city.
40:03University professors
40:04and even officials
40:05more or less close to the party
40:07could be found there.
40:10Louis Yaubo had a new project
40:12based on the model of Charter 77
40:15drafted by Vaclav Havel
40:16in Czechoslovakia.
40:17I remember, at that time,
40:20we always met in a restaurant to talk.
40:22It was a friend's restaurant
40:23because we couldn't discuss anything
40:24on the internet or the phone.
40:25So, each time,
40:26we invited friends to join us
40:27in that restaurant.
40:28If I remember rightly,
40:29we must have met a good dozen times
40:30to have dinner.
40:31We invited different people each time.
40:32Once, it would be academics.
40:33The next time,
40:34it would be academics.
40:35the next time,
40:47it would be writers
40:48and the time after that, lawyers.
40:51They all came to discuss
40:52Charter 08 with us.
40:57Tian Biao,
40:58a lawyer for cases
40:59deemed sensitive at that time,
41:01heard about these meetings
41:02and contacted Liu Jiabuo.
41:05I gave a bit of legal advice
41:10at the start.
41:10The first version they gave me
41:12included some 20 articles.
41:15I told him
41:15there were too many subjects covered
41:17and that it would be better
41:18to concentrate on political reform,
41:21the transition to democracy,
41:23the rule of law and human rights.
41:29There were many people
41:30working at the same time
41:31to improve the draft plan,
41:33all in the greatest secrecy.
41:35and that it would be
41:36that it would be better
41:36to keep the draft plan.
41:37The first version of the book
41:38is that the first version of the book
41:39is the first version of the book.
41:40The first version of the book
41:41is the first version of the book.
41:42After weeks of intense
41:43and secret debates
41:44among the intellectuals,
41:45Charter 08 produced a summary
41:47in 19 articles.
41:48It went from the independence of justice
41:52to freedom of speech or religion.
41:54XIA YELIANG is a professor of economy
42:01at Beijing University.
42:02He took part in these intense debates.
42:05But he considered
42:06Liu Xiaobo's text
42:08not sufficiently radical.
42:10Personally,
42:11I'm not fully agree with his points,
42:13but at that time,
42:14I think everybody should have
42:15some compromise
42:16and then agree on that
42:18because this version
42:20is very peaceful.
42:21There's no very strong words.
42:26There's no mentioning subversion
42:29of the government
42:29or anything like that.
42:31So I don't think
42:32the people who signed this
42:34would have the very serious results.
42:36Liu Xiaobo's text
42:39received 303 signatures,
42:42officials,
42:42managers of state enterprises,
42:44university heads.
42:45It was an unexpected success.
42:48The charter was to be published
42:49on 10th December 2008,
42:52International Human Rights Day.
42:54But the authorities
42:55scented danger.
42:56Liu Xiaobo
42:57and several other signatories
42:59like Liu Jie
42:59were arrested
43:0148 hours before publication.
43:03If you wrote an article
43:07on your own,
43:08it didn't worry them.
43:09But if several hundred people
43:11met together to sign it,
43:13that terrified them.
43:16And then,
43:17with charter 08,
43:19Liu Xiaobo
43:20showed that he was not
43:21just an intellectual dissident,
43:23he showed that he was also
43:24capable of organizing
43:25a movement
43:26and mustering
43:27opposition forces,
43:29including inside
43:30the heart of the system.
43:33Arrested on the 8th of December,
43:42Liu Xiaobo
43:42was arbitrarily detained
43:44for several months
43:45before his trial started
43:46in December 2009,
43:48before the intermediary
43:49court number one
43:50in Beijing.
43:53The trial was held
43:54in camera.
43:59The dissident's friends
44:00were kept at a distance
44:01by the police
44:02who had cordoned off
44:03the courthouse.
44:09I come here
44:10to support Liu Xiaobo,
44:13to support
44:14charter 8.
44:18A dozen ambassadors,
44:19including those
44:20from Germany
44:20and the United States,
44:22sent observers
44:23who were also banned
44:24from the courtroom.
44:25Two days later,
44:30on the 25th of December 2009,
44:33Liu Xiaobo
44:34was sentenced
44:34to 11 years in prison
44:36for subversion
44:37of state power.
44:39The date
44:40was not chosen
44:41by chance.
44:42Beijing hoped
44:43that on Christmas Day,
44:44foreign media
44:45and diplomats
44:46would be less likely
44:47to gather
44:47at the tribunal.
44:49Persecution of individuals
44:50for the peaceful expression
44:52of political views
44:53is inconsistent
44:54with internationally
44:56recognized norms
44:57of human rights.
44:58Mr Liu
44:59has peacefully worked
45:00for the establishment
45:01of democratic processes
45:03in China.
45:04We continue
45:05to call
45:06on the government
45:06of China
45:07to release him
45:08immediately
45:09and to respect
45:10the rights
45:10of all Chinese citizens.
45:13Alone,
45:14in front of his judges,
45:15Liu Xiaobo
45:16read a long declaration.
45:18Freedom of expression
45:19is not a crime,
45:20he said.
45:21He repeated
45:22what he had said
45:23in Tiananmen Square.
45:24I have no enemies.
45:26His principle
45:27of non-violence.
45:40Two weeks later,
45:41in the port of Oslo,
45:42a letter reached
45:43the Nobel Prize Committee.
45:45It was signed
45:46by Vaclav Havel.
45:47It's suggested
45:49that the Nobel Prize
45:50should be attributed
45:51to the imprisoned
45:52Chinese dissident.
45:54Intellectuals
45:55from all over the world
45:56joined in this appeal.
45:58The 8th of October,
45:592010,
46:01the Norwegian Nobel Committee
46:02announced its choice.
46:04The Norwegian Nobel Committee
46:06has decided
46:08to award
46:08the Nobel Peace Prize
46:10for 2010
46:11to Liu Xiaobo
46:13for its long
46:15and non-violent struggle.
46:19I heard him
46:20with his foreign accent,
46:21Liu Xiaobo.
46:22Oh, my.
46:23I couldn't hide my emotion.
46:26As the saying goes,
46:27I laughed and cried
46:28at the same time.
46:30And I was not
46:31the only one that day.
46:32We all ran
46:33from one to the other.
46:37We were well aware
46:38of our influence.
46:39Liu Xiaobo
46:40The influence
46:42of those
46:43who fought
46:43for freedom
46:43and democracy
46:44in China
46:45was tiny.
46:48And in the world
46:48outside,
46:49only an infinitely
46:50small number
46:51of people
46:51had heard
46:52of Liu Xiaobo.
46:59Liu Xiaobo
47:00didn't know
47:01that he had
47:01the Nobel Prize.
47:02He moulded
47:03in his cell
47:04in the north
47:04of China,
47:05while the foreign
47:06media crowded
47:07round the residence
47:08of his wife
47:08Liu Xiaobo
47:09in Beijing.
47:13Some of his friends
47:14tried to get through.
47:17I think
47:18the one-party
47:18dictatorship
47:19would be ended
47:19within 10 years.
47:21I'm very optimistic
47:22about that.
47:24But this optimism
47:26didn't last long.
47:29The gate closed.
47:31In just a few hours,
47:33Liu Xiaobo
47:33was under house arrest.
47:34On the day
47:41of the Nobel Prize-giving,
47:42it was afternoon
47:43in Beijing.
47:47The police
47:48came knocking
47:49at my door.
47:50Two policemen
47:51rushed at me
47:52and put a black sack
47:52over my head.
47:54They tortured me
47:55in several ways.
48:00That lasted
48:01eight or nine hours
48:02until dark,
48:03and I fell
48:03into a coma.
48:08They took me
48:08to the hospital
48:09because I think
48:10the higher-ups
48:11hadn't given
48:11an order to kill me,
48:13just to give me
48:14a good torturing.
48:20In the days
48:21before the Nobel Prize
48:22was announced,
48:23Liu Xiaobo
48:23was rarely able
48:24to leave her apartment.
48:27One day,
48:28we found her
48:28in a Beijing cafe.
48:29She showed us
48:34her artistic works,
48:35her poems,
48:36and above all,
48:37the photos
48:38she took
48:38of her husband.
48:46Liu Xiaobo
48:46was ever conscious
48:47of the dangers
48:48surrounding her life
48:49with Liu Xiaobo.
48:49for many years,
48:59only bad things
49:00happened to me.
49:03How could you
49:04imagine that?
49:08During all those years,
49:10Liu Xiaobo
49:11never thought
49:12he might be nominated
49:13one day,
49:14even less
49:14that he might win
49:15the prize.
49:16Ever since I had known him,
49:18he supported
49:19the candidature
49:19of the Mothers
49:20of the Victims
49:21of Tiananmen Square.
49:23He always urged
49:24his friends,
49:25Chinese and foreigners,
49:26to do the same
49:27right to the end.
49:29Two days before
49:30being arrested,
49:31he was still saying
49:32to a friend
49:32on the phone,
49:33I ask you
49:34to redouble
49:34your efforts
49:35to obtain
49:36the Nobel Prize
49:37for the Mothers
49:38of Tiananmen Square.
49:46With the help
49:47of the German government,
49:49Lu Xia took refuge
49:50in Berlin
49:50in the summer
49:51of 2018.
49:54She can't express
49:55herself freely
49:56because her brother
49:56is a hostage
49:57in Beijing.
49:59But she felt obliged
50:01to show her presence
50:02among his comrades
50:03by reading a poem.
50:04in the middle of the
50:16of Tiananmen.
51:16In this video by the Chinese Penitentiary Administration, we can see Lu Xia visiting Liu Xiaobo.
51:25That is how she told him about the Nobel Prize.
51:29That's how she learned that he was ill, gravely ill, with liver cancer.
51:34By this propaganda, we were supposed to believe that Liu Xiaobo was being well cared for.
51:39We see him being examined by several doctors, even while his health deteriorated.
51:50We can see the Nobel Prize winner doing physical activities in his prison.
52:03Above all, we see a man alone, in permanent isolation.
52:10In the course of 2017, the cancer worsened.
52:14Despite her house arrest, Lu Xia alerted the international community.
52:18In June 2017, Lu Xiaobo was admitted to Shenyang Hospital, terminally ill.
52:37Faced with international pressure, the regime allowed foreign doctors to visit his bedside.
52:41He confirmed his wish to be treated in Europe, but it was a masquerade, and it was too late.
52:53Is she understanding English?
52:57He cannot be moved, said their Chinese colleagues.
53:00Lu Xiaobo died a few days later, on the 13th of July, 2017, after nine years in prison.
53:13The international community preferred to keep its eyes closed.
53:17All that the countries were mainly concerned with was maintaining good trade relations with China.
53:23The whole world dreamed of one thing, making money, dealing with the Chinese market.
53:27There was no interest in democracy, or even human rights.
53:32For Mandela, the whole world was mobilized.
53:36For Lu Xiaobo, it was a sordid murder in front of the whole world.
53:41It was a death before the eyes of the entire world, and nobody cared.
53:49The Chinese regime organized a well-orchestrated funeral.
53:52The whole of Lu Xiaobo's family was summoned by the authorities.
54:02Official propaganda tried to control both the image and the legacy of the Nobel Prize winner.
54:10The regime ordered that his ashes be scattered at sea,
54:13to avoid having a place of memorial to Lu Xiaobo.
54:16Lu Xiaobo also told me that when she was with Lu Xiaobo in the very last days in his room in the hospital,
54:31he had several large boxes filled with all the writings that he'd produced during nine years in prison,
54:36between 2008 and his death.
54:38Just imagine, there were several trunks of manuscripts.
54:44But after Lu Xiaobo's death, the police confiscated all those manuscripts,
54:48all those trunks, and I don't know what happened to them.
54:51In China, Lu Xiaobo's name is totally censured.
55:03But internet users have started to speak of an empty chair.
55:07And in its turn, the term empty chair has been censored.
55:15There is only one place left in the country where the name Lu Xiaobo still resonates amongst the population.
55:20In Hong Kong, where for the past 30 years they have gravely celebrated the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
55:29From now on, the figure of Lu Xiaobo is everywhere in this major rendezvous in the life of the Hong Kong populace.
55:46But Hong Kong is a different China.
55:48The former British colony has for the moment the benefit of a special status,
55:53free access to the internet and foreign media.
56:01But in the interior of the country, there is total censorship.
56:04In 2008, the last time we met him, Lu Xiaobo foresaw the future risk.
56:21A few weeks later, he would disappear, imprisoned until he died.
56:25He left us these last words to understand his freedom.
56:30I think that I made the right choices.
56:39Of course, the consequences are important for me.
56:43But in any case, that's how we live in China.
56:46There is a price to pay.
56:47If you don't choose my sort of life, a life that most people consider to be too hard and too risky,
56:58then you will not pay the price that I pay.
57:00But if you think about it, you still have to pay a price, a certain price.
57:05For example, you will be obliged to lie.
57:13You have to follow the dominant ideology to obtain and maintain a good income, a good job.
57:19Impossible, then, to be concerned about the deaths of the 4th of June.
57:23Impossible to make the least criticism of the government.
57:27Impossible, in fact, to express the slightest authentic opinion.
57:31And all that for what?
57:34For a materially comfortable life.
57:37Well, I prefer to pay the high price of danger rather than become someone who lives a lie.
57:44Rather than become someone who disowns his own conscience.
58:01So, that's good, therefore.
58:03So, that's good enough for you.
58:11ORCHESTRA PLAYS
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