With his maximum six months detention just ended, the dissident writer Liu Xiaobo remained in custody in an undisclosed Beijing location today as authorities continued to hold him in violation of China’s criminal law.
Mr Liu, 53, was taken away by police on December 8, a day before the publication of the Charter ‘08 document that he co-authored with more than 300 intellectuals appealing for a new constitution, human rights, elections, freedom of religion and expression and an end to the Communist Party’s hold over the military, courts and government.
“The Public Security Bureau said they must keep investigating his case,” Mr Liu’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, told The Times.
Mr Mo, who does not know his client’s whereabouts, said that the PSB called Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, late yesterday with the unwelcome news.
In a letter to the Beijing Procuratorate, Mr Mo is calling on authorities to free his client or charge him formally, citing limits to soft detention under Chinese law. “If they want to keep him, they’ll have to change the name of the detention under which he’s held,” Mr Mo said.
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Mr Liu is a former university professor who spent 20 months in jail for joining the spring 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square .
His writings, most published only on the internet, call for civil rights and political reform, making him subject to routine harassment by authorities.
The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation said today that Mr Liu was being detained in a hotel in the Beijing suburbs. The hotel was not named.