Nobel prize winner’s widow vows to die over house arrest
LIU XIA, the wife of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace laureate and dissident, has told friends she is prepared to die in protest at being kept under house arrest.
The 57-year-old poet was put in detention at home in 2010, after her imprisoned husband won the peace prize for his human rights campaigning.
Calls for her release have grown since his death last year. “I’ve nothing to be afraid of. If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home,” Ms Liu said in a phone call to Liao Yiwu, a Chinese writer who posted the conversation online.
“Xiaobo is gone, and there’s nothing in the world for me now. Using death to defy could not be simpler for me,” she said. Ms Liu has never been charged or convicted of an offence.
Liu Xiaobo died last year of liver cancer. The dissident and veteran of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 was jailed in 2009 for state subversion.
His death prompted calls for Ms Liu’s release. Mr Liao, living in exile in Germany, said friends wanted her to move there to receive treatment for health problems, including depression.
China has let dissidents live abroad, but Xi Jinping, the president, has lately cracked down on the rights movement.