WHY DON'T WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS
A Tibetan writer said she
received a surprise call on Thursday from a Chinese dissident’s wife, who has
been under house arrest and held incommunicado by the authorities since 2009.
Tsering Woeser said on her
Twitter account that Liu Xia, 55, wife of jailed Chinese dissident and Nobel
laureate Liu Xiaobo, told her she has not been in good shape, the Hong Kong
Economic Journal reports.
Woeser said Liu spoke with a
trembling voice. Liu said she tried to make a phone call to see if it was
possible, adding she has been a sick person pretending to be well, according
Woeser.
Radio Free Asia tried to contact
Liu after the revelation but failed.
A human rights activist claiming
to be her friend said the reason Liu called was that she could no longer bear
her situation after many years of confinement.
Liu Xiaobo, 61, one of the
leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement that was crushed by the
army in 1989, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on subversion charges for
organizing a petition urging an end to the country’s one-party rule.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2010 but was not able to attend the ceremony.
Liu Xia has been under house
arrest since her husband’s incarceration.
According to a recent post from
Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in
China, Liu Xiaobo’s brothers were forbidden to visit him in jail during the
Lunar New Year holiday.
The last time they saw him was in
August 2016, according to Apple Daily.