JAILED Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo marked his 55th birthday on Tuesday in a prison in north-east China, prompting renewed calls from rights groups for his immediate release.
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Christmas Day last year on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a bold petition calling for political reform in one-party Communist-ruled China.
He was named the peace prize winner in October, sparking fury in Beijing, which equated the Oslo-based Nobel committee’s decision with encouraging crime.
A ceremony in Liu’s honour was held in the Norwegian capital on Dec 10.
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an activist network based in Hong Kong, said it wanted to ‘take this opportunity to wish Liu Xiaobo a happy birthday and to once again call for his immediate and unconditional release’.
The group recalled in a statement that Liu was spending his first birthday at the remote Jinzhou prison in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, but had not been free to celebrate in the past two years.