BEIJING — China has long wanted a Nobel prize. Now that it has one, its leaders are furious. The Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo on Friday, lending encouragement to China's dissident community and sending a rebuke to the authoritarian government, which sharply condemned the award.
In naming Liu, the Norwegian-based committee honored his more than two decades of advocacy for human rights and peaceful democratic change – from the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 to a manifesto for political reform that he co-authored in 2008 and which led to his latest jail term.
President Barack Obama, last year's peace prize winner, called for Liu's immediate release.
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The wife of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, was allowed to meet with her husband Sunday at the prison in northeastern China where he is serving an 11-year sentence for his pro-democracy writings, according to a message she posted on Twitter.
Liu Xia wrote that prison officials told her husband Saturday evening that he had been selected for the award, an honor that Chinese officials have vehemently criticized.
After Liu Xiaobo learned the news of his prize, "He was moved to tears," Wu'er wrote. "He said that this prize belonged to the souls of those who died at Tiananmen."
Hundreds died when the Chinese government sent troops and tanks to the center of Beijing on June 4, 1989, to crush the pro-democracy movement.
Liu, who was active in the 1989 demonstrations, spent the next two decades pressing for political reform in China.
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