Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, Lech Walesa: in the 1980s, these men were household names, winners of extraordinary victories against bestial tyrannies. Western politicians and intellectuals supported and encouraged them, and our solidarity contributed to the liberation of hundreds of millions of human beings whom certain relativists had considered ineligible for democracy (supposedly an exclusively Western cultural trait). Today, we need to remember another set of names: Wei Jingsheng, Hu Jia, and Liu Xiaobo. They are the new Havels and Mandelas, the heroic agents of a future dignity now denied to 1 billion of their fellow Chinese, men and women seeking the same rights that we enjoy.
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