Friday 8 October Lui Xiaobo [刘晓波] was recognised and named 2010 Nobel Peace prize winner. He is a coauthor of the Charter 08, released on 10 December on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. the Charter outlines basic ideas that the authors ask the Chinese Communist Party and ruling authorities to build into a constitution. These include: Freedom, Human Rights, Equality, Republicanism, Democracy, and Constitutional Rule.
During the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, Lui was advocating for a peaceful removal of students from the square prior to the army's intervention.
The group advocated for 19 changes to Chinese society to enable a national government, citizen's rights and social development.
For his part in Charter 08 Lui is serving time in a prison about 200 kms north of Beijing. He was arrested in 2008 and sentenced on 23 December 2009 to 11 years imprisonment.
Go to the New York Times [see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/chinas-charter-08/]. There's a full translation. It's good reading.
This is far more important to a lot of Chinese students in Hong Kong than their mid term papers due in the next few weeks. Interesting enough when the news hit, if you were searching through Baidu [a Chinese search engine] you didn't find much at all.
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