Nobel winner’s widow ‘disappeared’ – lawyer

CHINA’S government is responsible for the “enforced disappearance” of the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo’s widow, her US-based lawyer said in a formal complaint filed to the United Nations.

Beijing faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo when he died of liver cancer last month, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938, who had been held by the Nazis.

His widow, poet Liu Xia, 56, had been followed around the clock by security officials, and had not been in touch with anyone since about a day before her husband’s death, her lawyer, Jared Genser, told the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Liu Xia had been “held incommunicado in an unknown location by Chinese government authorities” since July 15, the day of her husband’s funeral, the lawyer said.

“I demand that Chinese authorities immediately provide proof that Liu Xia is alive and allow her unhindered access to her family, friends, counsel, and the international community,” Genser said in a statement e-mailed to AFP.

He said international law defined enforced disappearances as situations in which government officials were involved in depriving a person of her freedom against her will, and refuse to acknowledge that deprivation or conceal the disappeared person’s fate.

He said all such conditions had been met in Liu Xia’s case.

The UN working group did not acknowledge AFP receipt of Genser’s complaint, but said that generally speaking, its process of issuing an opinion on the matter was lengthy and could take years.

Beijing would be free to dismiss that non-binding outcome.

The US, the European Union and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on Beijing to free Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel prize seven years ago – despite never having been charged with a crime.

Chinese authorities have said she is a free citizen who was merely too griefstricken by her husband’s death to be in touch with friends or counsel.

I demand that [China] provide proof that Liu Xia is alive