Thursday November 3, 2011
Chinese rebel writer tells his own story
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Chinese poet and dissident Liao Yiwu was forced into exile for his critcism of the Chinese state. Photo/AP |
Compelled to write, forced to flee
China is once again leaning on noted dissident Ai Weiwei in an effort to shut him up.
He's been accused of tax evasion and ordered to pay millions, but defied a gag order and went public with the story.
He remains in his Beijing home, but other dissidents are not so lucky.
For them, exile is the only answer as China moves to silence dissenters who might be getting ideas from the Arab Spring.
Correspondent Saroja Coelho has the story of Liao Yiwu, who used to be bound by shackles to fellow victims of state repression.
Having fled the threat of yet another prison term in China, he is today a celebrity in Germany, where he now feels bound to tell the stories of the downtrodden.
Our thanks to the Digital Archive for Chinese Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands for the original recording of Liao Yiwu's poem, Massacre.
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