A global reading in honour of imprisoned Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo is scheduled to take place today at over 160 global institutions.

Organized by Berlin’s International Literature Festival, the goal is to “share Liu Xiaobo’s works with a broader readership, to remind the world that a humanist, a freedom fighter, an outstanding writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner is still in a Chinese prison and to express the protest against it,” according to a press release.

Participating Canadian organizations include Amnesty International, China Rights Network, PEN Canada, Simon Fraser University, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and the Festival international de la Poésie de Trois-RivieÌ€res.

Authors who called for the worldwide protest include Salman Rushdie, Rawi Hage, Doris Lessing, and Madeleine Thien.
Marian Botsford Fraser, chair, PEN International’s Writers in Prison committee, and Jiang Weiping, honourary member, PEN Canada, read Liu Xiaobo’s poem, “You Wait for Me with Dust.”