Nobel Peace Prize winner's wife hopes to tell him of award in prison visit

Published on Friday 8 October 2010 22:07

THE wife of the world's latest Nobel Peace Prize winner is expected to visit him in prison today and finally give him the news of his award.

Police kept reporters away from the prison where democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, and the mobile phone of his wife, Liu Xia, was cut off.

The Communist government continues to censor reports about Liu's award. But one of Liu Xiaobo's brothers, Liu Xiaoxuan, said the prison meeting would be today.

There was no word from Liu Xiaobo or his wife, who had been in police custody. "She's disappeared. We're all worried about them," Liu's lawyer Shang Baojun said yesterday.

Chinese authorities, who called Liu a criminal shortly after his award on Friday and said his winning "desecrates the prize", sank yesterday into official silence. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao didn't answer a question about the prize that was submitted on Friday for a news conference in Turkey with that country's premier.

Only the state-run Global Times newspaper spoke out yesterday. An editorial in its Chinese-language edition called the award "an arrogant showcase of Western ideology" and said it disrespected the Chinese people.

But one Chinese newspaper cartoonist, Kuang Biao, posted an image on his blog on Friday of a Nobel prize medal behind bars. Another well-known blogger, Ran Yunfei, wrote yesterday: "In an era in which the internet is gradually making information available to everyone, trying to hide from any Chinese the news that Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize is hopelessly stupid behaviour - the more one tries to hide it, the more obvious it becomes."

Some of China's most prominent activist lawyers said yesterday they were being harassed by police as they took advantage of the peace prize to try to reconcile differences among themselves. Lawyers Pu Zhiqiang, Jiang Tianyong and others said they were not allowed to leave their homes.

"The government doesn't know how to react to the news of Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel prize," Pu said. "They are nervous, fearful and are acting chaotically."

Another Chinese group wrote an open letter to police protesting the detention of other activists who tried to celebrate the peace prize on Friday but said they were too scared to turn in the letter.

In naming Liu, the Norwegian-based Nobel committee honoured his more than two decades of advocacy for human rights and peaceful democratic change - from the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 to a manifesto for political reform that he co-authored in 2008 and which led to his latest jail term.

President Barack Obama, last year's peace prize winner, has called for Liu's immediate release.

Liu's wife's freedom has been compromised since the eve of the Nobel announcement, when she said police tried to force her to leave Beijing, offering her a prison visit with Liu in return.

She had planned to hold a news conference on Friday, but police would not let her leave her apartment.