Liu Xia, the widow of Chinese Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo, gestures as she arrives at the Helsinki International Airport in Finland on July 10. (Jussi Nukari/Associated Press)
Free at last
After eight years of de facto house arrest, the widow of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died last year in Chinese custody boarded her flight to freedom.Liu Xia, a poet, was relentlessly surveilled and effectively detained after the death of her husband, writer and activist Liu Xiaobo, on July 13 of last year. But on Tuesday, she was on her way to Germany.
Photographers caught up with her in Helsinki, where she was in transit, and she grinned widely for the cameras spreading her arms — a stark contrast from the few images of her that have surfaced over the past few years in China.
Over the last year, the European Union and the United States have repeatedly urged President Xi Jinping to allow the widow to leave the country, asserting she had never been charged with a crime.
News of her release comes just days before the first anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s death, an occasion that was expected to draw fresh attention to her detention.
Liu’s late husband was a renowned writer and activist who served several stints in Chinese jail cells. He was last arrested for his role in creating Charter 08, a call for political changes in China and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The next year, he became China’s first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights.” A chair sat empty for him at the ceremony in Norway.
He died a year ago Friday, of liver cancer, under the close watch of Chinese security personnel and their cameras. They had denied him the chance to seek treatment abroad.
Through her husband’s ordeal, Liu Xia, 57, faced her trials on her own. Chinese officials told reporters she was free to do what she wished, but Western diplomats and the media were effectively banned from visiting her.
Since her husband’s death, she has been guarded by Chinese security personnel and constantly monitored, unable to leave her house on her own, take interviews or travel. Occasionally, she managed to make contact with friends and supporters. In a letter published last year, Liu wrote she was “going mad” in her isolation, according to the AFP news agency.
“Too solitary,” the note read, “I have not the right to speech / To speak loudly / I live like a plant / I lie like a corpse.” — Danielle Paquette and Emily Rauhala
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