ABUJA: Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai condemned China’s treatment of her fellow peace prize-winner Liu Xiaobo following his death of liver cancer in custody last week .
Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms in China.
Liu’s incarceration meant he was unable to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and he became the second winner to die in state custody, the first being Carl von Ossietzky in Germany in 1938. Liu’s wife Liu Xia remains under effective house arrest.
“I condemn any government who denies people’s freedom,” Yousafzai told Reuters at a school in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
“I’m hoping that people will learn from what he (Liu) did and join together and fight for freedom, fight for people’s rights and fight for equality,” she said.
Malala’s trip to Nigeria was aimed at raising awareness of education problems in Africa’s most populous country, where over 10.5 million children are out of school, more than anywhere else in the world.
The issue is felt more severely in the mainly Muslim north. The south has over the decades seen greater investment and a system of schools started by Christian pastors affiliated with British colonists.
Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2017
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