BEIJING: Under the shadow of heavy police surveillance, around 20 close friends of China's late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo have held a defiant private memorial in Beijing.
Since the prominent democracy activist died of liver cancer in custody last week, his Chinese supporters say they have been barred from leaving their homes or organising commemorative events, while censors have blocked online tributes. But on the seventh day following Liu's death - an important milestone for the deceased in traditional Chinese culture - the group gathered last evening for a two-and-half- hour ceremony in which they shared memories of the man. "Xiaobo is gone, but we are still alive," Jin Yan, one of the attendees, said at the memorial, according to a statement released by the organisers today.
"During the democracy movement in Eastern Europe, many people were killed or sent to the mental hospital. But they had a saying within the movement: between the living and the dead, there's a moral contract. The living has an obligation to complete what the dead started."
Public gatherings to commemorate the deaths of prominent dissidents are rare. In the past, those who took part in memorials have been subjected to questioning, detention and in some cases even charged with the crime of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for "subversion" after co-writing Charter 08, a petition calling for democratic reforms in Communist Party-ruled China. The veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, but he was not allowed to attend the ceremony in Oslo. Two days after his death, officials released a video of Liu's wife and relatives lowering an urn containing his ashes into the sea, an untraditional form of burial in China which friends saw as a way to deprive his supporters of a pilgrimage site.
A photo of the event in Beijing shows around 20 people in a room, holding candles and photos of the bespectacled writer. His portrait was placed on a wall, flanked by flowers. Another image shows the group bowing their heads. An attendee who asked not to be named said state security officers stood guard outside the building, while some mourners were driven to the site in police cars.
Still, others were prevented by police from participating in the memorial. "(Liu) lived just 60 years, with the last 30 years full of frustrations and suffering," said Xu Xiao, another attendee, according to the statement. "Rather than say that the regime is too cruel, we may say that Liu Xiaobo was too brave."