Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Laureate, democracy activist and political prisoner has died in custody from liver cancer. [See post June 27 2017.]
His campaigning sent him to jail for almost a quarter of his life and has condemned his wife, the poet, Liu Xia to house arrest. She has been almost entirely cut off from the outside world, to prevent her speaking out about her husband since 2010. There is growing concern that her invisible prison will endure long after his death. Initially she was an abrasive young intellectual, always effervescent, but a friend said, “She has been physically and mentally destroyed”. “Xiaobo chose his work. Liu Xia chose Xiaobo. And they have taken revenge on her, which is absolutely terrible.” She married him when he was serving three years in a labour camp and they never had children because they thought it would be unfair. Her telephone and internet connections were cut off but a journalist did manage to visit her two years ago. “I don’t keep track of the days anymore,” she said, looking frail, trembling uncontrollably and crying. “I think Kafka could not have written anything more absurd and unbelievable than this.”
She was born 1 April 1961 and is a Sun Aries opposition a Libra Moon square a feisty Mars in Cancer; with a creative Water Grand Trine of Mars trine Neptune trine Mercury in Pisces, with Mercury opposition Pluto. During these last years of his imprisonment she’ll have had the tr Uranus square tr Pluto in hard aspect to her Sun, Mars and Moon, so a time of severe stress which has left her with a heart condition, with both her parents dying during this time as well.
His Capricorn Sun was square her Sun and opposition her Mars, so it would be a sparky connection; with her Jupiter in Aquarius conjunct his Venus and opposition his Uranus to smooth a few rough edges and bring a sense of adventure.
Their relationship chart has a passionately enthusiastic Venus opposition Mars, which trines/sextiles the composite Jupiter and Jupiter is also on the focal point of an opposition of Uranus (Moon) to Mercury and the composite Sun – so very supportive and inspired by the same ideals.
And all he did was write a pamphlet asking for democracy and an end to China’s one-party rule. The west may be in chaos but it does have enormous privileges which we all too easily take for granted.
They were brave people with minds of their own, certain that democracy and world opinion would validate them. There’s little comfort to the onlooker in the fact that they loved each other greatly, she won’t want to go on after his death. They are among the few who still die for principles, badly, scandalously and not instantly. A travesty of justice. Shameful, lamentable, yet they can’t be forgotten.