Chinese Government: Shut Up or Else

Late in the evening of December 8, 2008, two days before the 60th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Liu Xiaobo was taken away from his home by police. Another dissident and scholar, Zhang Zuhua, was also taken away by police at that time. According to Zhang, the two were detained on suspicion of gathering signatures to a charter appealing for greater respect of human rights in China. [1]

A literary critic and former professor of literature, Liu Xiaobo has been held in incommunicado detention since December 8, 2008. Human Rights Watch has pointed out that the detention of Liu Xiaobo is arbitrary and violates the minimum procedural guarantees specified under Chinese law. Over 30 signatories of Charter 08 have been questioned, summoned by the police, or put under surveillance since Liu's arrest. [2]

Liu Xiaobo has been arrested repeatedly since he spent 20 months in detention after the 1989 protests. He was jailed for three years in the 1990s but remains among the most outspoken and irrepressible critics of the system. [3]

Write but
don't rock the boat
Don't CRITICIZE!
or
else

Fear of writers. Fear of criticism.
Fear of the truth.
You can wash away the blood from Tiananmin Square--
but not words.
You can't kill their words.
There is no net big enough
to catch all the words.