Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident who won Nobel prize while in jail, dies at 61

Beijing

LIU Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61.

The Bureau of Justice of Shenyang, the city in north-eastern China where Mr Liu was being treated for cancer, announced on its website that Mr Liu had died.

The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it wa…