Liao Yiwu, December 10, 2018, International Human Rights Day, Berlin     I’ve so often said that my courage and everything about me comes from prison. This is how I differ from other Chinese writers. In prison, I was tortured ‘til I could no longer bear it, and tried to kill myself twice. But I learned to write secretly; and I learned to play the xiao (ancient flute) from an over-80-year-old monk. From the sound of his xiao, I realized that freedom comes from the soul. A man of inner freedom is the natural enemy of a dictatorship. His political views come in a pale, second place. The key is that, only after experiencing the horror, sadness, and pity of losing freedom and being trampled upon, […]

China Citizens Movement Outstanding Citizenship Award Selection Committee, December 10, 2018       Today, we offer our respects to an outstanding citizen. She is a loving mother, a strong mother, and a great mother. She is eighty-five years old this year, an age at which she should have been enjoying a peaceful retirement with her family. Instead, at her venerable age, she has been thrust into a situation that no mother should be forced to experience: she has had to see her son imprisoned and brought to the verge of death for committing no crime at all. In her quest to protect and support him, she stakes out a trail of blood and tears upon the great but troubled land that is China. Using […]