Liu Xiaobo Has Died

Reuters

 Liu Xiaobo, (1955-2017)

 He once said he hoped he'd "be the last victim

in China's long record of treating words as crimes". 

Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned for the crime of speaking.

Free expression is the base of

 human rights, the root of human nature

 and the mother of truth.  To kill free speech 

is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature, 

and to suppress truth.

~~  Liu Xiaobo

Letting their Voices Be Heard

Today is Human Rights Day worldwide.  If anyone's interested, here are two brave persons, continuing to speak out.   

 "They shot him nine times.

Losing a child breaks your heart in pieces.

It can't be compared to anything.

We gather strength from nowhere,

and start over.

My dream is to find justice."

Doris Berrio is the founder of the "League of Displaced Women", a group of women denouncing human rights violations and supporting women's issues.  She was forced to flee her home village in the region of Uraba in Colombia in 1997. Her husband received death threats from armed groups who had moved into the area. She escaped with her two young sons to the city of Cartagena, only to have her youngest son then murdered in retaliation for her efforts to fight back.

Blind self-taught legal activist Chen Guangcheng speaks directly to China's new leader Xi Jinping about human rights and rule of law violations, as well as religious persecution.  He names particular prisoners of conscience and asks for their release, one of whom is Nobel Peace Price Laureate Liu Xiaobo*.

(*For 26 months, Xiabo's wife Liu Xia has been cut off from the world outside her apartment in Beijing – prevented from receiving guests, making phone calls or using the Internet. She’s been charged with no crime. She is being punished for being the wife of China’s most famous political dissident, jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo). [Source]

When life becomes intolerable because their rights as human beings are consistently denied them, people sometimes, in desperation, take their own lives,  because the entities who govern them do not do anything to help or protect them:  Here are two countries' examples:

In Kyrgyzstan, three young women, aged 19, 19 and 20, hanged themselves after having been kidnapped for marriage, a 'tradition' in their country.

Every day approximately 32 girls are kidnapped and six are raped. That’s more than 11,000 young women who are kidnapped each year, and 2,000 rapes. Only one out of 700 are investigated as crimes, and only one in 1,500 is prosecuted. [Source]

And in Tibet, recently, three more!:

A 16 yr old Tibetan girl died yesterday after setting herself on fire.[Source]

A 17-year-old Tibetan man burned himself a week ago in Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province. In an apparent protest against China’s repressive policies in Tibet, Songdhi Kyab set himself on fire near Bora Monastery. He was reported to be alive when police forcibly took him away to a public hospital in Tsoe township, one of the biggest towns  in the area.  Eyewitnesses in the area say that Songdhi's survival may be “very slim” as he was seen smashing his head while engulfed in flames.[Source]

Lobsang Gendun, 29, a monk at the Penag Kadak Troedreling Monastery in Seley Thang, died after after setting himself on fire today in Pema County, Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. Eyewitnesses say Lobsang raised slogans with his hands clasped in prayers while engulfed in flames.[Source]

At least 92 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, with 28 cases reported in November alone. The acceleration has coincided with several anti-China rallies and a corresponding security crackdown.

China's response to protests of the Tibetan people has been to more harshly tighten an already tight control over them regarding their practice of religion and ability to speak out about their situation. Journalists are forbidden to investigate. 

U.S. officials have urged their Chinese counterparts to address policies such as restrictions on Tibetan Buddhist practices, surveillance on monasteries, arbitrary detentions, disappearances, and use of force against Tibetan activists, calling on  the Chinese government to "permit journalists, diplomats, and other observers unrestricted access to China's Tibetan areas," where Beijing has tightly restricted the flow of information. [Source]

Expressing concern and asking China to "please stop doing this" I don't think will have much effect, unfortunately.  It hasn't worked in the past.   Human rights violations have been occurring in Tibet for many, many years, since the Chinese swept in and took over the country.  Anyone following these matters can see that the Tibetan culture is slowly being erased and replaced.  Sixth-generation exiled Tibetan refugees living in India cannot become citizens. [Source]  They remain stateless, a people without a homeland.  When there are soldiers on every street corner, when  displaying an image of the Dalai Lama is grounds for punishment, when a people live in constant fear so great that they see no other recourse than to suicide themselves, it seems to me governments who are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should do a tad more than just express concern, claim sadness, and merely request the country violating these rights to please stop.  Am just saying.


This is 2012.  We humans have been living among one another for millions of years.  You'd think we would've evolved more by now.  Why is this crap still going on everywhere?   The injustices remain the same; only the technology and methods get more sophisticated.  Human trafficking, sexual abuse of children, kidnapping or disappearing whole groups, imprisonment for expressing an opinion, torture, murder, assassination  by drones, destroying another's land and people with poisonous chemicals or bombs laced with white phosporous guaranteeing lasting suffering to generations to come.  It never ends.

I sometimes wonder what it'd be like  to be inside the skin of one of many thousands of frightened, severely oppressed people, for just one day.  To feel that absolute fear, to have to watch everything you say and do for fear you be 'taken away', to live under such threat day after day after day.  Would I fight back, and how?  Would I keep silent, for fear of what they'd do to my children if I continued?  Say I escaped them, would I stay silent, just glad to have gotten away?  Fear can follow you, live in you, scar you  forever.  All these thoughts flood through me when reading these stories.  And it's not just one's rulers one fears.  The growing power of the drug cartels in Mexico, for example, decapitating and dumping mutilated bodies in public places as a warning not to interfere with their activities - last year, 493 such deaths; this year predicted by year's end to have been similarly high (49 headless and dismembered bodies in Nuevo Leon state in one month alone).  Not to mention the countless lives destroyed by civil unrest causing humanitarian crises in places too numerous to mention.

Not only lawless criminals, ruthless governments  or endless wars take away one's rights (and life); ordinary persons do it to one another as well, like a husband to a wife, a mother to a child, a friend to a schoolmate, unfortunately.  No one should have the right to tell you what to think or believe.  Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and that "this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief."  Under this provision, not only does no government have the right to not allow you to practice your religion, but no parent has the right to dictate his/her offspring's present or future beliefs or religion.  (The Declaration also declares that one has the right to change one's beliefs.)  Choosing to follow this or that path in life, especially one that is not 'traditional', should be one's right as well.  One should be free to choose the life one wants, marry who one wants, be who one wants, without fear of reprisal.    This is a subject that's rarely addressed, much less discussed, in terms of universal human rights.  Granted, being shunned, chastised, bullied or disowned is not the same as being imprisoned for speaking out or being physically tortured, but the victims of intense or sustained personal intimidation (of whatever kind) and certain victims of state-sponsored, unjust persecution do have this in common: their individual rights have both been summarily dismissed as being totally irrelevant. 

 It's interesting to see how many of the basic rights specifically mentioned --even among the more civilized, democratic and 'advanced' countries, are still, sadly, simply not the case today,  due to massive economic hardship, and the arrival and spread of Terrorism, where citizen's rights are increasingly subject to being bargained away. But here's the thing.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just that--a declaration.  It does not in form create binding international human rights law. 

The "right to an existence worthy of human dignity", of those basic things necessary for survival, such as "food, clothing, housing, medical care, and protection" -  may one day amount to being privileges, as more and more are finding themselves entitled to less and less (or no) access anymore  to what was long taken for granted.. A sobering thought.

There are many ways to fight injustice, support human rights, and spread the word.  Here's one:

Video from 2011 celebrating 50 years of Amnesty International

I remind myself that although I've posted about the situation in Tibet  here, here, here, and  here (and about writer Liu Xiaobo here and elsewhere),  these and today's posting are but small, infrequent or 'occasional' speakings-out, and that it's  not enough.  It's never going to be enough, given the magnitude of the reported abuses.  But maybe a reader (assuming anyone actually got this far reading!), might do the same - i.e., spread the word.  Let's do it!  Because they can't, the ones for whom it would be dangerous to do so, the ones who will be punished for doing so.  We should do it - because we can:     Talk about it, write about it, sing about it - just get the word out.  ("Let's stand up/ Stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up/ Don't give up the fight!" ~ ~ Bob Marley).  :)

Thanks for stopping by.


 

Stand Up for Tibet Today

Last week - 32-year old Richen, widowed mother of 4 from Ngaba
 set herself on fire in front of a Chinese police surveillance station
at the gates of Kirti monastery.

Tsering Kyi, young female student from the Tibetan middle school in Machu,
set herself ablaze at the vegetable market in Tro Kho Menma Shang village in Machu.
Chinese vendors at the Machu vegetable market threw stones at her burning body.

Dorje, 18, set himself ablaze in a nomadic area of Ngaba, the third immolation in three days.
He is the 26th Tibetan to have self-immolated since February 2009 in protests against Beijing's rule in Tibetan-populated areas.  [1]

These are the acts of a desperate, deeply troubled people.   A different picture is painted from the Chinese goverrnment's point of view:  In Tibet, "the people are happy," it claims, with the changes brought under Chinese rule.

The people say different.

"Soldiers are ... everywhere."
"You can't have a picture of the Dalai Lama. You would be arrested."
"You can't speak out. You would be beaten. Taken away. Disappeared.
"You can't leave the country.  Reporters can't get in.  News is difficult to get out."*
 “Communities and monasteries in these areas are undergoing patriotic re-education.”
“Tibetans have been warned that they can be shot if they protest against Chinese government rule.”

"Happy" is not a word I would use to describe a population forced to live under such conditions.

Studying the history of any nation, one is struck, in general, by mankind's seemingly incessant desire for possession of territory throughout the ages -- and the Power wielded by those able to claim and assert control over the territories they manage to acquire.

Tibet has now been claimed by China and named the Tibet Autonomous Region.
An autonomous region is an area of a country that has a degree of autonomy, or freedom from an external authority.


au·ton·o·mous   adj: According to my dictionary, means "not
controlled by others.  Independent.  Self-governing."  Which doesn't seem to be the case, however, in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

This posting is not about who owns what parcel of land;who is or is not in control; or even what words one uses to describe one's acquisitions.  My concern here today is about the violation of the rights of a particular group of human beings who want to keep their own language, beliefs and culture, and not be afraid every waking day of their lives.  

This is not about refusal to assimilate.  People willingly adopt a new language, religion, culture or way of life every day.  But if who you are and what you think, believe, say, write, or choose as a way of life constitutes grounds for you to be monitored, arrested, punished, "re-educated", disappeared or killed  ... that's bullying gone viral.  Societies claiming to be civilized that routinely permit, or engage in, this sort of "governance" should not then be surprised when others call them to task for this hypocrisy.

civ·i·lized .adj. :
1.  showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable;
2.  cultured, polite.

Intolerance, cruelty and revenge are not compatible with civilized society.

Such practices, unfortunately, are rampant throughout history.   Some group arrives that wishes to occupy the space another group inhabits. Or territories are won or lost as a result of war between nations.   I can't help seeing a parallel, though, between what happened to the original North American Native Indian population and what's happening today to the Tibetans vis-a-vis the slow, steady eradication, through subversion/conversion/dispersion, of a culture struggling to maintain its existence in the wake of drastic and unstoppable change. As with the Native Americans, the Tibetans are being forced to assimilate, not use their own language, accept subjugation and refrain from resistance.  I am not the only one who wonders if in another 40 years' time everything one normally associates with the words "Tibet" or "Tibetan" will be but a memory. 

Such were the thoughts that came to me when I heard recently from friends about what's happening today in Tibet.

"They install spies in monasteries to monitor us and demand that all monks be "re-educated."
"Our Tibetan native language is not allowed to be taught in the schools."
"All international phone calls are monitored. You have to watch what you say."

("Re-educated:  as in "Wipe the mind clean, insert only officially sanctioned material".)
 
I tried to visit a well-known, widely read Tibetan online news site today and a big red WARNING box suddenly appeared on my screen telling me not to go there, that doing so would infect my computer with malicious trojans ("This site is listed as suspicious. Visiting it may harm your computer.  Third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which cause a warning notice", it explained.)

Tibetan news sites or blogs in support of Tibet are routinely hacked, so this is not surprising, given that today is the anniversary of a Tibetan uprising.  Clearly, certain entities do not appear to want what's currently happening in Tibet to be known, much less talked about.

Today there will be demonstrations, candlelight vigils, marches, and protests worldwide, from thousands of people in a wave of support from activists, friends and sympathisers in solidarity with the Tibetans, standing up to say, unanimously, that the brutality and killings must stop.


I sense their desperation, these repressed  Tibetans who are resorting to self immolation as the only way out of a devastating situation. The last defiant act, the final plea, to the world at large, to please help.



I realize with a small shudder that if I  now lived in China or Tibet, this blog post would likely never be allowed, and that if I persisted in expressing my opinion or sharing such news about Tibet that unfortunate things might begin to happen to me.

(Just ask Cheng Jianping, who got sent for a year of hard labor to be patriotically "re-educated" for posting a sarcastic remark on Twitter.  Ask Liu Xiaobo, professor, writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose long,  non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China and calls for the Chinese government to become more "democratic" earned him a lengthy, ongoing prison term.)

So many uprisings, so much civil discontent, worldwide.  So many wars, so many violations by humans against other humans, so much death and suffering .... so little one can do.

Hang onto your freedoms while you still have them, those that can.  The bullies of the world will always exist, pouncing to control what you do, limit where  you go, decide who you're allowed to talk to, what you read; monitor what you say, judge you by what you believe.  And if you object, you will be dealt with.

We are all humans sharing the same planet.  Some just have more Power than others.  It is those powerless others with whom we must stand as brothers.  Born into a different earthspace  ... we could be them.

A single image, whether captured by camera or painted by words, is worth a thousand reminders.  What kind of world are we living in where one's response to another's desperate act of suicide by fire -- is  to hurl stones at her burning body?  As a species, we seem not to have evolved all that much in the Human Compassion Department these millions of years we've been inhabiting this planet.

Tibetans in Tibet are risking everything to ensure their message is heard and acted upon by the outside world.  *Last year, 54 percent of all messages sent to the Sina Weibo blogging site from Tibet had been deleted by the Chinese government.[2]

Please.  Stand up for Tibet today.  Enough of these needless deaths!!!

Human Rights Day Today

The librarian from Odessa arrested for advocating the right of Ukrainians to use their native language. She was declared insane and confined in a maximum security psychiatric hospital. A gentle woman in a white blouse and plaid skirt, we get to meet her years after.  As also a psychiatrist who refused to declare dissidents mentally ill.  For this he was himself sent to prison.  I remember when we got reports that he was on hunger strike, being forcibly fed and drugged with antipsychotic medications. And there he sits, years later, across the table from us, sharing a coffee.  The Tibetan monk, describing the instruments of torture to which he and his cell mates had been subjected, recounts the gnawing hunger and frequent beatings, that prisoners ate rats and shoelaces to quell their hunger pains. These were the survivors, the ones who eventually got out.   So many, many more that didn't; now new ones being arrested and imprisoned every day.

So here it is 2010 and not much has changed.  You write letters, sign petitions, send words of support, march in protest, hold candlelight vigils, all of which helps bring attention to the situation, but it's not enough.  Because it's still happening, it's still going on, people are still being imprisoned and tortured for what they think or believe or write or say.

My mom used to have a little Indian saying posted in her kitchen, something about walking a mile in someone else's moccasins and I  wondered if I could stand just five minutes in someone else's shoes in a dark cell, being starved or beaten, not being allowed contact of any kind with loved ones, knowing it'd be years before I got out or even if I ever would--all because of something I wrote.  Still, that's in the realm of imagination only.  I could maybe "imagine" it but I don't ever see it as happening to me.  But it could.  I mean, I could one day be in the wrong place at the wrong time and express an opinion or write something that might anger certain officials and suddenly find myself in a similar position as those for whom I once wrote letters.

According to Amnesty International,  “Too many perpetrators are getting away with some of the worst crimes known to humanity."  Amnesty surveyed conditions in 159 countries last year, noting that "people were tortured in 111 nations" and that “human rights abusers enjoyed impunity for torture in at least 61 countries.”
The report sharply criticized some of the world’s largest and most powerful nations for not fully signing up to the International Criminal Court  — notably the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Russia.[1]

Because I was once energetically involved in human rights work, this day--December 10--when it arrives every year, jolts me out of my complacency.  What have I done lately to help further human rights in the world?  When's the last time I wrote a letter to or for a prisoner of conscience?  Or even thought much about it?   It's not enough to know that injustice happens, that it continues to happen.  Does one ever "retire" from activism?  Yes and no; no and yes.  So many other things on one's plate these days, so many other things clamoring for and eating one's time.  You profess to care, my little voice nudges me.  Care how?  But really, how much effort would it take to write one letter?  Is once a year, on the anniversary of Human Rights Day, enough?  Could writing one letter really make a difference?  Well today at least there will be many people all over the world doing just that--writing one letter.[2]



 Liu Xiaobo on the effect of just one letter:
  
One Letter Is Enough

for Xia

one letter is enough
for me to transcend and face
you to speak
as the wind blows past
the night
uses its own blood
to write a secret verse
that reminds me each
word is the last word
the ice in your body
melts into a myth of fire
in the eyes of the executioner
fury turns to stone
two sets of iron rails
unexpectedly overlap
moths flap toward lamp
light, an eternal sign
that traces your shadow

~ ~ Liu Xiaobo

Translated by Jeffrey Yang
 [From:  PEN American Center]

They wouldn't let him attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.  His wife is under house arrest. They wouldn't let her go either. He was supposed to receive his award today.  It's the first time in 75 years that no representative of the winner was allowed to make the trip to receive the medal.[3]  He may not be getting out soon, but his words are.  Greywolf Press will be publishing his poetry collection, and Harvard University a selection of his works, in 2012.  

Not everyone being incarcerated for their writings or peaceful activism is as famous or well-known as Xiaobo.  Scores of others are complete unknowns, caught up nevertheless in the web of injustice.  You rarely hear about them. Some vague notion occasionally, but it seems so far from one's daily life.  Not something one thinks about a lot, or even at all.  Even for those who follow such things, sometimes silence is too easy.  It takes over, becomes habitual:  Situation noted.  Now what. 

Maybe it's time to go bang some pans in the street, as Molly Ivins once suggested.  Or write a letter.  Something.  Anything.  My inner voice just won't let this go for some reason.  These are fellow human beings.  They could be us. We could be them. We are them--all in this together.  Some of us just get to be more free than others, get to have our say without repercussion.  Should be something that's possible for all.  (In a perfect world.  Which of course it isn't.)  (Okay, off the soapbox now.) Anyway ....if anyone cares to join in and write a letter,  grab a pen.  Get a stamp.  Some cases and addresses can be found here. 

Words matter.

Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Liu Xiaobo  now joins Mynmar (Burma)'s Aung San Suu Kyi and German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who won the 1935 prize while jailed by the Nazis, as the only Nobel Peace Prize laureates honored while in detention.  Liu Xiaobo was sentenced on December 23, 2009, to eleven years in prison for expressing his views, in writing, critical of the Chinese government.

It's unfortunate that the Chinese government becomes so enraged when their warnings to other countries not to do certain things--like consider Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize[1]--or orders  not to honor someone (like the Dalai Lama[2]) are ignored, that retaliation is the response of choice:

"When the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, announced the award ... the broadcast on the BBC and CNN went black ... Major mainland news portals have yet to publish news of Liu's prize ...text messages containing "Liu Xiaobo" were blocked by the major cell phone service providers.[3].

I have posted this video twice before,  here and here, and am doing so again.  The attempt to silence Xiaobo, or news about him, thank the universe, does not extend here.



Daybreak

for Xia

over the tall ashen wall, between
the sound of vegetables being chopped
daybreak’s bound, severed,
dissipated by a paralysis of spirit

what is the difference
between the light and the darkness
that seems to surface through my eyes’
apertures, from my seat of rust
I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains
in the cell, or the god of nature
behind the wall
daily dissidence
makes the arrogant
sun stunned to no end

daybreak a vast emptiness
you in a far place
with nights of love stored away

 ~ ~ Liu Xiaobo

Writers Rally for Liu Xiaobo

Fifteen days ago, on December 23, 2009, Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and 2 years' deprivation of political rights for writing some sentences the Chinese authorities felt "incited subversion of state power."   This country seems particularly sensitive to criticism, however factually based.  Its response was to silence, and imprison, the writer.

A week ago, on New Year's Eve, while most of us were enjoying holiday festivities, preparing the family dinner or getting ready for a New Year's Eve party, a small group of writers came together and stood in the falling snow on the steps outside the New York City Public Library, to read the seven sentences for which the writer Liu Xiaobo was sent to prison, and to call for his release.    Some things haven't changed all that much going into the New Year, it seems.  Liu Xiaobo joins 45 other writers now imprisoned in China for, well .... writing.

My New Year's resolution for 2010--which I've already broken, by the way--concerned chocolate and ice cream, among other things.  As of today I am making a new one, one that I'm far more likely to keep, and that is to begin more frequently adding my small voice to the others speaking out for writers like Liu Xiaobo.

What's one more little squawk from an obscure Internet blog? Molly Ivins, may she rest in peace, said we need people "in the streets, banging pots and pans"--like they did in Argentina in 2001--to bring about change.)  At Christmas time people gather on the sidewalk or on neighbors' doorsteps to sing carols--why not writers assembling on non-holidays, in public places, to read out the words of other writers who are no longer able to write? Why not ordinary bloggers occasionally jumping in to voice their support from the sidelines?  You never know who might be listening.

Never underestimate the power of the spoken or written word on a casual reader or passerby--those few words can sometimes change a person's life.  Nearly two decades ago, a  woman doctor whose resume I typed, happened to mention, as she was leaving, that she had just recently adopted a "prisoner of conscience".  "What's that?" I asked.  Her random remark led me to seek out more information about these 'thought prisoners'--and I ended up working with Amnesty International for the next eleven years, where I was privileged to meet former men and women who'd survived years of unbelievably harsh and degrading, dehumanizing treatment--people who had been shackled in prisons, starved, force fed or physically broken in workcamps, put into asylums and drugged, or sent away into exile, merely for expressing their views.  That one little offhand remark by a stranger took me on a path of no return, so to speak.  It compelled me to become less complacent, to not just observe and note, then turn away, but to actually want to join in and try to do something. Life, though, as it always does, intervenes and sometimes I lapse, as my attention is drawn elsewhere--until I'm reminded again--as I was when I saw the above video.

On an official level, governments are still rounding up and punishing people for what they think, what they say, how they say it.  (This occurs on the more personal level, too, albeit less severely, but damaging all the same. People still continue to attack, marginalize, isolate and punish others because of differences in politics, religion or strongly held opinions. While a state can deprive someone of his liberty, one's own family, friends, peers, or even employer can retaliate by withholding support, terminating the friendship, chastising, or firing someone, all because one's beliefs or lifestyle or choices in life embarrass, annoy or clash with their own.  Small intolerances or state-sanctioned repression--some subtle, others blatant--still playing out on the world stage in the never-ending war between the "Usses" and the "Thems".  Evolution, it appears, has yet to occur on this front.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years' confinement for writing 224 Chinese characters--for basically saying, for example, that he believes in democracy, and advocating that China discontinue its one-party rule.  The Chinese constitution states that its citizens have freedom of speech and of the press. In practice, however, if you try exercising this freedom, you risk being surveilled, harrassed and searched, arrested and imprisoned. He was also a political activist. The powers that be would prefer that he had stayed silent.

They may have silenced Liu Xiaobo temporarily--but not his words.  Other writers are seeing to it that his situation is made known and that his words don't disappear.  (You can see one of his poems posted today over on Salamander Cove ("Daybreak" under entry #20100107), and a few more on the PEN American Center website, where you can hear them read aloud by writers Paul Auster, Edward Albee, Don DeLillo, and E. L. Doctorow.)

Liu Xiaobo, in his own words:



A little nudge, to remind myself to not slip into such complacency again, to notch my awareness level up a tad or two:

Speaking for the Silenced

Small squeak today by a few,
giant roar tomorrow by the many ...
a little group of writers, standing
in the cold
snow falling, wind blowing words drifting
out
unchaining chains
breaking the
silence

erase one voice, another takes
its place
then another ...
and another

and another
________

*Update:  February 1, 2010:  Liu Xiaobo has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.[1]