Celebration of Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo

WHAT:      A Multi-Media Celebration of 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo
DATE:       Sunday, December 5, 2010
TIME:         3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Hayworth Theater, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90057
                    Free admission
                    A multi-media presentation about the life of Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo
                                                    with readings by actors Jack Ong, Joon Lee
                    Followed by a speakers forum with
                                   Professor Perry Link (Princeton University),
                                   Mr. Song Yongyi (California State University),
                                   Mr. Adam Somers (PEN West)
                                   Mr. James Zimmerman (Amnesty International)
Reservation recommended:
                    Free Admission to Hayworth Theater. However, seating is limited,
                    Please reserve seating at Hayworth Theater by email to vag@visual-artists-guild.org or call 310-433-0697, 310-5390234
                    6:00 p.m. Please join us for Dinner Banquet at a Chinese restaurant to be announced, cost $30

* * * **

Professor Perry Link -

Dr. Perry Link is Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, specializing in modern Chinese literature and Chinese language. Dr. Link received his doctorate degree from Harvard University. He has translated many Chinese stories, writings and poems into English. Along with Dr. Andrew J. Nathan, Dr. Link translated the Tiananmen Papers, which detailed the governmental response to the 1989 democracy protests. He currently teaches at the University of California-Riverside where he holds the Chancellorial Chair. Dr. Link translated the Charter 08 manifesto which Liu Xiaobo and others had initiated.

Song Yongyi – Confirmed to speak

Song Yongyi is the 2006 recipient of Visual Artists Guild’s Champion for Freedom of Speech Awardee and the 2005 American Librarian Association Courage Award recipient. As a youth in China, he organized an underground reading group. Mr. Song has published many bibliographies, source books, monographs and articles. In 1999, he went to China to collect source materials on the Cultural Revolution. He was detained for six months. He was later released and criminal charges dropped after China received pressure from scholars around the world and from the U.S. government. Mr. Song is currently the technical services and collection development librarian at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library of California State University, Los Angeles.
Song Yongyi is a friend of

PEN West - Adam Somers

Adam Somers is director of PEN West. PEN is an organization of writers with two distinct yet complementary aims: one fundamentally literary and the other having a freedom of expression mandate. Liu Xiaobo served as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2003 to 2007 and currently holds a seat on its board. Liu Xiaobo is a former President of independent PEN in China. Adam Somers is

James Zimmerman
Amnesty International China expert. Recipient of Visual Artists Guild 2009 Spirit of Tiananmen Award.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

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The Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 - from the Nobel Committee

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace. Such rights are a prerequisite for the "fraternity between nations" of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal. The country now has the world's second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Scope for political participation has also broadened.

China's new status must entail increased responsibility. China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights. Article 35 of China's constitution lays down that "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration". In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China's citizens.

For over two decades, Liu Xiaobo has been a strong spokesman for the application of fundamental human rights also in China. He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China which was published on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 10th of December 2008. The following year, Liu was sentenced to eleven years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power". Liu has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China's own constitution and fundamental human rights.

The campaign to establish universal human rights also in China is being waged by many Chinese, both in China itself and abroad. Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China.

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