China is a threat to the whole world: dissident writer
DHARAMSALA, 8 April 2019: A Chinese dissident writer has said that his homeland is a threat to the entire world and that it would be better for mankind China ‘splits up’ under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping.
“My dream is that China splits up into 10 or so countries. Because China, as it is today, is a threat for the whole world,’ Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer dubbed the ‘Chinese Solzhenitsyn’ has said, reports the AFP
Liao Yiwu, who was jailed for writing a poem called ‘Massacre’ about the Tiananmen Square protests, made the remarks while his latest book ‘Bullets and Opium’ was published in France.
‘Returning to China is not a big concern for me. I would like to go back to my native Sichuan – when it’s independent. Then I would be delighted to return,’ Liao, who has been living in exile in Berlin since 2011 has was quoted as saying in the report.
The dissident writer is ‘very pessimistic’ about positive changes in his homeland under Xi Jinping who would remain president for life and is not likely, which he described as an increasingly authoritarian rule.
‘Thirty years ago we thought we might develop towards democracy. Today it is all about making money,” he added.
‘Bullets and Opium’, which has been banned in China, recounts the stories of dozens of victims of the Tiananmen massacre wherein a peaceful democracy protest led by students was meted with a brutal military crackdown by the one party-run Chinese government resulting in the massacre of hundreds of people, mostly students. The June 4, 1989 incident remains a taboo in China now.
The writer has further lamented that even after three decades, ‘we still don’t know the exact number of victims’.
While human rights groups estimate that between 2,600 and 3,000 people died after 200,000 soldiers were brought in to encircle the Chinese capital, British diplomatic cables declassified in 2017 put initial estimates of the death toll at around 10,000.
