Authors for Peace
  • Home
  • The Idea
  • European Holiday! // Europäischer Feiertag!
  • Erinnerung braucht Intimität - Literatur in Südkorea
  • Verfassungsschutzbericht zur AfD (2019)
  • Manifest "Extinction Rebellion" auf Deutsch (Oktober 2019)
  • 2018
    • Contract for the Web 2018
    • Authoritarianism 2018
    • PEN America against Trump 2018
    • For our Future’s Sake - Brexit 2018
    • Gegen Nationalismus - 13-10.org 2018
    • Paradigm Shift Migration 2018
    • documented deaths of refugees 2018
    • Europäischer Feiertag im Literaturhaus Berlin 2018
    • Solidarität statt Heimat 2018
    • Cambridge Analytica 2018
    • Open Letter to Erdoğan 2018
    • Özdemirs Rede zur AfD 2018
    • Release Gui Minhai 2.2018
  • 2017
    • Europe 2017
    • Populism / Populismus 2017
    • Trump 2016 / 2017
    • CIA Surveillance tools 2017
    • Turkey / Türkei 2016 / 2017
    • #FreeDeniz 2017
    • „A Soul for Europe“ Konferenz 2017
    • Macron's Europe Speech 2017
    • An Open Letter to the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College 2017
    • Bundestagswahl 2017
    • International Congress for Democracy and Freedom 2017
    • Political Murder Liu Xiaobo 2017
    • Anleitung Datensicherung / Guide data security 2017
    • Call for a European Public Holiday 2017
  • 2016
    • Refugees / Flüchtlinge 2016
    • China Press Freedom 2016
    • Pressefreiheit / Freedom of the Press 2016
    • Aleppo 2016
    • Brexit 2016
    • Friedenspreis an Emcke 2016
    • A poem by Ashraf Fayadh - World Poetry Day 2016
    • Flüchtlingspolitik: Österreichische Künstler protestieren 2016
    • Saudi Court overturns Ashraf Fayadh's death sentence 2016
    • wir machen das 2016
    • Worldwide Reading in support of Ashraf Fayadh 2016
    • Jews & Arabs Kiss 2016
  • 2015
    • Nein zu Pegida 2015
    • Charlie Hebdo 1/2015
    • A MESSAGE FROM PARIS by Ian McEwan / 2015
    • Aufruf für eine menschliche Flüchtlingspolitik (11.11.2015)
    • News Blog >
      • "hautbahnhof" 2015
      • Surveillance Blog
      • Snowden's Germany Files / Snowdens Deutschland-Dateien
      • David Miranda's unlawful detention
      • Russian laws choking free speech must be repealed now
      • The Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance
      • Art Spiegelman on Surveillance
      • Stop Surveillance
      • Hacking Online Polls
      • Demo "Freiheit statt Angst"
  • "We Refugees" by Hannah Arendt
  • Free Liu Xiaobo 10/2014
  • Reset the Net 6/2014
  • Writers Against Mass Surveillance - Other Languages
    • Die Demokratie verteidigen im digitalen Zeitalter
    • Writers against mass surveillance
    • POUR UNE DÉFENSE DE LA DEMOCRATIE À L'ÈRE NUMÉRIQUE
    • En defensa de la democracia en la era digital
    • LOTTIAMO CONTRO I SISTEMI DI SORVEGLIANZA
    • Oproep tot democratie in het digitale tijdperk
    • Ett upprop för demokrati i den digitala tidsåldern
    • Til forsvar for demokratiet i en digital æra
    • Uppropet för demokrati i en digital tid
    • Í þágu lýðræðis á tölvuöld
    • فراخوان نویسندگان جهان: تحت نظر گرفتن سرقت &#
    • Dijital Çağda Bir Demokrasi Savunması
    • Η ΒΑΣΗ ΓΙΑ ΤΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΨΗΦΙΑΚΗ ΕΠΟΧΗ
    • Hentikan Pengintaian Masal
  • Worldwide Reading for Snowden
  • Snowden Interview
  • The NSA Archive
  • Snowden Interview by The Guardian
  • Snowdens Deutschland-Akten
  • NSA - "America, No You Can't" / September 2013
  • NSA - Brief an Bundeskanzlerin Merkel + Letter to Chancellor Merkel / August 2013
  • BETWEEN LINES – An Hour of Beauty // Zwischen Zeilen - Eine Stunde Schönheit
  • Release Li Bifeng / June 2013
  • 製造敵人是危險的 ——我們呼籲中國政府釋放李必豐 簽名發起人:艾未&
  • One Billion Rising February 2013
  • Reading for Pussy Riot December 2012
  • Liu Xiabo: I Have No Enemies - December 2012
  • Gangnam Style for Ai Weiwei - November 2012
  • APPEL DE STRASBOURG / STRASBOURG APPEAL / STRASSBURGER APPELL - October 2012
  • Free our Sisters - Pussy Riot September 2012
  • Aufruf Shahin Najafi - Juni 2012
  • Reading against Assad, for democracy in Syria - April 2012
  • Lesung gegen Assad, für Demokratie in Syrien - April 2012
  • نداء من سمر يزبك، كاتبة سورية، إلى جميع الك
  • Petition - Release Liu Xiaobo December 2012
  • Liu Xiabo we stand with you - March 2012
  • Liu Xiabo March 2012 Worldwide Reading
  • Liu Xiabo März 2012 Weltweite Lesung
  • Appeal Liu Xiaobo 2011
    • Signatories
  • Aufruf Liu Xiaobo 2011
    • Unterzeichner
    • Herta Müller zu Liu Xiaobo
  • 9/11 – Ten Years On
  • 9/11 - Zehn Jahre später
  • International Women’s Day 2011
  • Peace Day Event 2010
    • The Authors
    • Reading Schedule
  • Important Speeches - Wichtige Reden
    • Joachim Gauck: Einbürgerungsfeier anlässlich 65 Jahre Grundgesetz, 22. Mai 2014
    • Steinmeier: "Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism" (January 2020)
  • The Life You Can Save - Always
  • Contact
Picture
Li Bifeng is a prolific poet and novelist as well as a well-known dissident, who has spent a total of over 12 years in prison since 1990 for his activism and critical writings. He served a five-year sentence for taking part in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, followed by a seven-year jail term from 1998-2005 for reporting on a workers’ protest in the Sichuan city of Mianyang in 1998. While in prison, Li produced some poetry and kept a diary. Some of his work can be found here.
4th of June 2013

                                            Authors for Peace
                                                                supports
                    ilb-Appeal to release Li Bifeng


Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

in regard to the continuing imprisonment of Li Bifeng, the international literary festival berlin (ilb) is hereby calling artists and intellectuals, schools and universities, radio and TV stations, theatres and other cultural institutions to join us for a worldwide reading in solidarity with Li Bifeng to take place on the
4th of June 2013.

We would be very happy if you could support our appeal by signing our petition alongside the initial signatures of Herta Müller, Ai Weiwei, Salman Rushdie, Ha Jin, and Liao Yiwu. We would also be very happy if you would participate on the 4th of June by organising a reading in your own home town or city. You’ll find your texts written by and about Li Bifeng in the next two to four weeks on our website www.worldwide-reading.com.

If you would like to participate, please confirm your support by writing to:
[email protected].

My very best regards,

Ulrich Schreiber
Festival director

13th international literature festival berlin

Our appeal to the Chinese government

to free Li Bifeng

The Peril of Creating State Enemies

On the heels of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th congress, a Chinese court sentenced underground poet Li Bifeng to 12 years in prison on November 19, 2012 on a fictitious charge. By doing so the world was sent a, as we believe, dangerous signal of political regression.

Liao Yiwu, an exiled Chinese writer now living in Germany, and Li Bifeng met each other in the Third Prison of Sichuan Province after the June 4th Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Of the two dozen or so political prisoners there, the two became friends because of their shared interest in literature, and the friendship was continued beyond the prison walls.

Over the years they have exchanged manuscripts and shared their views upon life with each other. Li Bifeng was an optimist who, beside of writing about, also participated in pro-democracy activism, while Liao Yiwu, a pessimist, burrowed deep in writing and performed music in bars to make a living.

In 1998, Li Bifeng wrote a non-fiction piece about a sit-in protest by textile workers in his hometown Mianyang and their blockade of highways. He sent his documentary to human rights organizations overseas. His actions alarmed the local police, and he was again arrested after being on the run for six months. This time, the government changed its strategy. He was charged with “financial fraud”, and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Last September, two months after Liao Yiwu had slipped across the Chinese border into Vietnam, local security police called Li Bifeng to “have a cup of tea with them.” Li Bifeng followed the inquiry because he was routinely summoned by the police for their questionings. Then, in front of everyone, he was seized by five policemen, handcuffed and taken away in a police car.

Liao Yiwu didn’t hear of Li Bifeng’s arrest until May, 2012. Authorities suspected Li Bifeng of assisting Liao’s escape financially or physically, but in fact, he had nothing to do with Liao’s flight.

The trial of Li Bifeng lasted several months with repeated adjournments. Only days after China had completed its decennial power transition and the new leaders presented their faces on stage, several thousand kilometers away from Beijing in the small town Shehong, in the district of Sichuan, Li Bifeng was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The defence lawyer protested that “the evidence is dubious, and there is no victim in the so-called fraud!”

Li Bifeng is turning 48 years old this year and his three prison terms add up to 24 years.

Just like Liu Xiaobo, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Li Bifeng embodies the political reality in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. But while Liu Xiaobo is regarded as part of the intellectual elite, Li Bifeng is of much lesser importance. Liu Xiaobo, in his letters to Liao Yiwu, tirelessly called for China’s own Václav Havel or Martin Luther King, Jr., and aspired to be like them. Li Bifeng, on the other hand, is one of the anonymous, silent majority. They share the same conscience and sense of responsibility with the elite, but they are buried in the filthy sewage of society and live like mice. These “mice,” ravaged in turn by poverty and tyranny, once marched in the streets of Chinese cities, protested, helped each other, and faced the bullets of troops enforcing martial law with their
bodies.

The two friends, Liao Yiwu and Li Bifeng, have given each other warmth over the years, the warmth of one mouse huddling against the other. However, Liao did not trust Li Bifeng – for a good reason. Among China’s political prisoners from the era of June 4th crackdown, Li Bifeng must be the record holder of failed escapes. Shortly after the movement in 1989 was crushed, he and a few others managed to get several kilometres into Myanmar before they were captured by Burmese communists who obeying handed them back to the Chinese communists. He was subsequently almost beaten to death and has sustained permanent disabilities since. Five years later he again was on the run for having gotten into trouble once
more, but this time he tried the border between China and Russia in the Northeast. He bribed a local smuggler, but as he was waiting to get into a cargo container to be shipped out of the country, he overheard that the smuggler was going to sell him in Chifeng, a Chinese city on the other side of the Heilong River, as a slave worker. He ran for his life, traversing China to the southernmost city Shenzhen where he attempted to make it to Hong Kong by crossing Chung Ying Street (China-Britain Street). He loitered around for two hours, and was seized by suspicious border guards. After that, he braved three or four more border crossing adventures, and failed every time. When he told these stories to Liao Yiwu, he managed to strike sadness into Liao and cause him to laugh his head off at the same the time.

Two months before Liao Yiwu’s own planned escape, also around the time when the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei disappeared in Beijing Capital International Airport, Li Bifeng invited Liao Yiwu for dinner. As usual, the two friends talked about their writings. Quite abruptly, Li asked Liao if he needed money. Liao said he did not. Li Bifeng then asked if he needed “help to go,” and Liao said he was not going anywhere.

Liao Yiwu was scared by Li’s inquiries and relieved that Li Bifeng, who was a junkie of fortunetelling using the Book of Changes, didn’t get anything out of him. How could Liao Yiwu, plotting a slip-away himself, possibly seek help from someone who himself tried it so often, and failed every single time?

By the time Li Bifeng completed the 12-year term, he will be 60 years old. He will then have to finally give up on the idea of running away. Even if he eventually arrived in the free world, what good would that do him?

Over the years, the Chinese authorities have impounded a large trove of Li Bifeng’s writings. Isn’t it enough to take away a writer’s work? Why send him to prison? China’s new leaders should understand that the imprisonment of an innocent man will draw wide compassion and indignation, just like the death of the innocent citizens in the massacre of 1989. Of all people, China’s new leader Xi Jinping should know better, as his own father was once an inmate in Mao Zedong’s prisons, also as an innocent man.

Now that Li Bifeng ’s story is being told by Liao Yiwu, it is going to reverberate for a long time to come. Since last May, more than 300 intellectuals around the world have signed the appeal to free Li Bifeng. And as the persecution of Li Bifeng continues, more and more people will join to make their voices heard.

We call on the Chinese government to release Li Bifeng. It is wrong to create fake charges against an innocent man, treat his life so wantonly, and destroy his family along the way. For those, who have to carry out their “judiciary” function for an authoritarian state, as long as they still have any humanity left, they cannot possibly be proud of the role they play. For the Chinese communist regime, nothing is more self-destructive than continuously manufacturing enemies for itself.

November, 25, 2012

(Translated by Yaxue Cao)

Initiated by:

Ai Weiwei, artist, Beijing.
Liao Yiwu, exiled author and musician, 2012 winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Berlin.
Ha Jin, author, winner of American Book Award, Boston.
Herta Müller, author, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, Berlin.
Salman Rushdie, winner of Booker Prize 1981, 1993 and 2008, USA.
Joe Ahearn | Ibrahim Alkoni | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Lindita Arapi | Homero Aridjis | Sun Baoqiang | Florian Balle | Tomek Barej | Priya Basil | Angela Becher | Artur Becker | Bei Ling | Yahia Belaskri | Henk Bernlef | Karin Betz | Wolf & Pamela Biermann | Yves Bonnefoy | Carmen Boullosa | Magdalena Bozyk | Hans,Christoph Buch | Angelika Burgsteiner | Cai Yongmei | Cai Chu | Mircea Cartarescu | Amir Hassan Cheheltan | Chen Long | Chen Yong | Chen Sixian | Chen Kuide | Chiang Louisa | Choi SF | Victoria Chou | Marie Colbin | Małgorzata Cymbor | Dawei Bian | Michael M. Day | Jack Den | Dorothea Dieckmann | Jörn Donner | György Dragomán | Kurt Drawert | BoŜena Dudko | Patrycja Dzikowska | Yasmine El Rashidi | Asli Erdogan | J. Glenn Evans | Peter Faecke | Moris Farhi | Fan Xirong | Fang Zheng | Fei Liangyong | Gisela Forster | Helmut Forster | Carlos Franz | Shamala Gallagher | Gao Yuan | Gao Sheng | Gebrüder Gao | DW Gibson | Peter Gnielczyk | William Goldman | Juan Goytisolo | Daniel Graf | Karin Graf | Anatolij Grinvald | Yeemei Guo | Lars Gustafsson | Ha Jin | Han Liuyin | Han Guang | Han Wenguang | Nikolaus Hansen | Alireza Hassani | He Xintong | Hen Jie | Hans,Olaf Henkel | Wolfgang Hörner | Erika Hoffmann | Bartek Hojka | Hong Xiaohan | Rolf Hosfeld | Hou Zhiming | Hu Di | Hu Jian | Hu Dong | Hu Muqing | Hu Ping | Hu Shilin | Huang Xiang | Urs Jaeggi | Elfriede Jelinek | Jiang Tanwen | Helga Junghans | Peter Stephan Jungk | Łukasz Kalinowski | Marja Kaikkonen | Adrian Kert | Siegfried Knittel | Gerd Koenen | Vyacheslav Kupriyanov | Kong Shiren | Alexis Kouriche | Viacheslav Kupriyanov | Władysław Kurczyński | Michael Leh | Irina Liebmann | Li Renke | Li Zhengkai | Li Hengqing | Liang Yongchun | Liao Zhifeng | Ma Lin | Paulo Lins | Liu Chunling | Liu Haoran | Liu Xianhua | Liu Yanzi | Liu Xuan | Liu Yunxia | Liu Wenxian | Liu Qing | Torbjörn Lodén | Grzegorz Lorek | Lu Mao | Agnieszka Lukaszewicz | Lun Zhang | Luo Yaqi | Monica Macansantos | Göran Malmqvist | Lucyna Małolepsza | Norman Manea | Alberto Manguel | Gonzalo Márquez | Lesley Marshall | Predrag Matvejevic | Meng Lang | Courtney Meredith | Dragana Mladenovic | Mondion | Herta Müller | Christina Murmann | Christiane Neudecker | Jagna Nieuwazny | Heidemarie Ott | Gunilla Palmstierna,Weiss | Laurie Parker | Peng Xiaoming | T. Peng | Dietger Pforte | Pian Shan | Monika Platek | Martin Pollack | Jose Manuel Prieto | Qi An | Tobias Quester | Sibylle Ralhia Belle | Jacques Rancourt | Dana Ratajska | Dianne Rennack | David Van Reybrouck | Moritz Rinke | Solo Robinson | Susanne Rockweiler | Judith Rodriguez | Marie Rötzer | Lia Romeo | Marek RoŜak | Zuzka Sabata | Thomas Sänger | Boualem Sansal | Faraj Sarkohi | Michael Schmalfuß | Uli Schreiber | Christa Schuenke | Michael Schwägerl | Eduardo Sguiglia | Shen Zhaohua | Sheng Xue | Pedro Shi | Tajima Shinji | Nasrin Siege | Gereon Sievernich | Tomasz Siuda | Anna Sitkowska | Sjón | Tzveta Sofronieva | Wolfgang Sofsky | Klaus Staeck | Song Zhiwei | Peter Stamm | Elena Stoecker | Su Yutong | Su Ming | Su Xiaokang | Irena Szumie | Zbyszek Świercz | Tan Jun | Tang Xiaodu | Tao Wen | Janne Teller | Teng Biao | Mei Ann Teo | Madeleine Thien | Martin,Liao Tienchi | Miriam Toews | Tong Mu | Karen Tzhang | Streten Ugricic | Laura van den Berg | Joan & Michael Virel | Keto von Waberer | Anne Waldman | Wang Lixiong | Wang Liling | Wang Dan | Wang Xingzhong | Wang Ju | Wang Yiliang | Mr. Wawrzek | Marek Wawrzyński | Wen Yunchao (Bei Feng) | Wen Xiuying | Wenfen Chen | Herbert Wiesner | Stéfan Ludmilla Wieszner | Martin Winter | Natascha Wodin | Woser Tsering | Wu Wenjian | Wu Yisan | Wu Shiyu | Wu Jiemin | Xin Hong | Xu Hui | Xu Zerong | Xu Wenli | Xuan Feng | Yan Ming | Yang Feng | Yang Lian | Ye Du | Ye Fu | Ye Zhongyuan | Yi Jun | Yi Ping | Yu Zhiguan | Yu Luojin | Yue Lin | Zeng Dekuang | Zeng Jiming | Zeng Jianyuan | Zhang Xiaogang | Zhang Wie | Zhang Yong | Zhang Jian | Zhang Pu | Zhang Hongtu | Zhang Jing | Zhang Ling | Zhang Min | Zheng Yi | Zhong Weiguang | Zhong Yan | Eve Zhu |
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.