Liu Xia: widow of Nobel laureate arrives in Berlin after eight years under house arrest

By Lily Kuo in Beijing Philip Oltermann in Berlin

Liu Xia smiles as she arrives at Helsinki airport on her way to Berlin.

Liu Xia, the widow of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, has arrived in Berlin, having left Beijing after almost eight years of living under house arrest and days before the anniversary of her husband’s death.
At 4.49pm (1539 BST) on Tuesday a Finnair flight carrying the poet and visual artist touched down at Tegel airport in the German capital, where Liu is reported to be seeking medical aid.
Human rights activists and friends of Liu had confirmed her departure from Beijing earlier on Tuesday. 

According to Human Rights Watch, the German government negotiated Liu’s release.
“Ever since her late husband received the Nobel peace prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit for its sustained pressure and hard work to gain Liu Xia’s release,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch.
Chinese authorities have insisted that Liu, who was not formally charged with any crime, has been free to move as she wishes, but her supporters say she has been under de facto house arrest.
Liu’s husband, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel prize in 2010 for his activism in China. 

He was jailed in 2009 for subversion, for his involvement in Charter 08, a manifesto calling for reforms. 

He died last year from liver cancer while serving an 11-year prison sentence.

People wait at Berlin airport to welcome Liu Xia. 

Patrick Poon, a China researcher for Amnesty International, said Liu had been allowed to leave China but her brother, Liu Hui, has had to remain in Beijing. 

He was convicted on fraud charges over a real-estate dispute in 2013, a case activists believed to be retribution against the family.
“It’s really wonderful that Liu Xia is finally able to leave China after suffering so much all these years,” Poon said. 

“However, it’s worrying that her brother, Liu Hui, is still kept in China. Liu Xia might not be able to speak much for fear of her brother’s safety.”

Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and political prisoner, dies at 61 in Chinese custody.

Liu Hui posted on WeChat that his sister had flown to Europe to “start her new life”. 

He wrote: “I am grateful for people’s concern and assistance these past years.”
News of Liu’s release came one day after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, met with Li Keqiang, in Bremerhaven, inviting speculation about whether the development was part of a broader diplomatic deal. 

China and Germany have in recent months become the two main targets of a US president threatening trade tariffs on industrial imports.
“Is Liu Xia’s release all about softening up the German chancellor, as one of the most important representatives of the liberal industrial nations, in order to form a joint front against Trump?”, wrote the German weekly Die Zeit. 

“It’s an ugly suspicion, but one that can’t be dismissed out of hand.”

“Of course I am very happy that finally she’s gained her freedom and could leave China, but this does not mean China has made any improvements on human rights,” said Hu Ping, a US-based editor and friend of Liu’s.
Since last year, activists, diplomats and friends of Liu have been lobbying especially hard for her release. 

Hu said Liu was told in May she may be able to leave in July. 

Li’s visit to Germany and the signing of $23.6bn (£1.98bn) in trade deals do not seem to him to be a coincidence. 

“This might be why she was able to leave now,” he said.
Another friend of Liu’s told the German news agency Dpa that Germany had been consistently lobbying for the artist’s release over the last four years and kept contact with her via its Beijing embassy. 

“Merkel’s visit [to China] in May was apparently crucial for the release,” the anonymous friend is quoted as saying.
Friends and advocates had been calling for Liu’s release so she could seek medical help for severe depression. 

In May the Chinese writer Liao Yiwu released a recording of a phone call in which Liu described the mental torture of her situation. 

“If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home,” she said.
One of the last times she was seen in public was in July last year, when she scattered the ashes of her late husband at sea. 

While under house arrest, both of her parents died and she has been hospitalised at least twice for a heart condition.
Frances Eve, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said: “Hopefully she will be able to recuperate and receive much-needed medical care, but China is effectively holding her brother hostage so she may not speak out about her ordeal. The Chinese government has already shown its willingness to ruthlessly deploy collective punishment against their family.”

Oriental Barbarians

Hear China’s totalitarian cruelty in this widow’s sobs
The Washington Post

Liu Xia, center, holds a portrait of Liu Xiaobo during his funeral in 2017. 

FOR AN example of gratuitous cruelty in the service of 21st-century totalitarianism, listen to the sob-choked voice of China’s Liu Xia. 

The widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and dissident Liu Xiaobo, Ms. Liu was recently recorded by a friend as she described her despair at being denied sanctuary in Germany and subjected to an endless continuation of the house arrest she has endured since 2010 — even though her husband died 10 months ago and she has never been charged with a crime.
“If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home,” Ms. Liu told her friend Liao Yiwu, a writer who lives in Germany, in an April 30 conversation. 

“It’s easier to die than live. Using death to defy could not be any simpler for me.” 

In an earlier call, an excerpt of which Mr. Liao posted online, “Liu Xia was crying non-stop,” he said.
China punished Liu Xiaobo for his advocacy of peaceful democratic change in China with multiple imprisonments, including an 11-year sentence he was serving when he died last July, at 61, of liver cancer. 

Ms. Liu, 57, a poet and artist, has, if anything, been treated even more unconscionably. 

She has been confined to her home for more than seven years without access to a phone or computer, even as the government portrays her as a free citizen. 

Meanwhile, her brother was prosecuted and sentenced to prison on trumped-up charges in 2013. 

Mr. Liao says Ms. Liu, not surprisingly, has suffered from clinical depression for several years.
The regime compounded the abuse by encouraging false hopes of freedom. 

Germany has offered Ms. Liu harbor and medical treatment, and Mr. Liao and other friends said security officials repeatedly promised Ms. Liu that she would be allowed to leave the country. 

First she was told to wait until after last fall’s Communist Party Congress; and then until after the meeting of Beijing’s rubber-stamp legislature in March, where Xi Jinping consolidated his position as dictator for life. 

She waited, while the Germans and her supporters obeyed the regime’s demands that they remain silent.
“On April 1, before Liu Xia’s 57th birthday, the German Ambassador called her to convey Chancellor Angela Merkel’s special respects, and invited her to play badminton in Berlin before long,” Mr. Liao recounted. 

Yet five weeks later, the siege on her home remains unbroken, prompting the despair she expressed in the phone calls. 

Some of her frustration seemed directed at the German Embassy, which, she said, “keep[s] on asking me to do these documents over and over again,” even though she lacked the means to do so.
The real fault lies with a regime that appears bent on crushing the spirit of a woman simply because her husband was recognized for what the Nobel committee called “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” 

That regime claims to offer a new model of greatness for other nations to emulate. 

But how great can it be if it so fears a 57-year-old poet who only wants to live out her life in peace?

Chinese Nobel laureate's widow ready to die in house arrest

Liu Xia, wife of the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, says she has nothing left to live for
By Lily Kuo

Protesters display a portrait of Liu Xiaobo and his detained wife Liu Xia. 

Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, has said she is ready to die in protest at being held under house arrest in China for more than seven years.
“Now, I’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home. Xiaobo is gone, and there’s nothing in the world for me now. It’s easier to die than live. Using death to defy could not be any simpler for me,” she said, according to a phone call on 30 April, recorded by her friend and exiled writer, Liao Yiwu, and posted online.

'I live like a plant': Nobel winner's wife 'going mad' under Chinese detention.

Liu, 50, has been under house arrest since 2010 after her husband, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel peace prize in absentia for his activism in China. 

Her husband, a civil rights campaigner, was jailed in 2009 for subversion and died last year from liver cancer while serving an 11-year prison sentence.
In an excerpt of the 16-minute phone call with Liao, Liu is heard crying and cursing. 

“I’m so fucking angry that I’m ready to die here … If I’m dead, it’ll all be done with.”
At one point, Liu cries for several minutes. 

In the recording, Liao plays the song Dona, Dona, from a Yiddish song released during the second world war about a calf being led to slaughter.
“Please allow me to use Liu Xia’s sobbing as its new lyrics,” Liao wrote. 

“Dona, Dona, give her freedom. Dona, Dona, please cry out loudly for her.”
Advocates have repeatedly called for Liu’s release. 

A former civil servant and a poet, she has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. 

Chinese authorities insist she “enjoys all freedoms in accordance with the law”, but her movements have been severely restricted and she lives under constant surveillance.
During this time both of Liu’s parents died and she has been taken to hospital at least twice for a heart condition. 

According to the rights activists, Liu has told her lawyer about having severe depression.
After her husband’s death, Liu’s supporters hoped she would be allowed to leave the country.
“First they told her to wait until the party congress was over; next they told her to wait until the conclusion of the ‘Two Sessions’ in Beijing in March of this year,” Liao wrote in his post on the US-based human rights site, Chinachange.org, citing legislative meetings held late last year and this year.
Germany and the US have both called on China to remove restrictions on Liu and allow her to leave the country. 

But activists say Chinese authorities are likely to keep her silenced to prevent her from becoming a symbol or rallying point for other dissidents.
“The cruelty the Chinese government has shown Liu Xia is a chilling signal for human rights defenders across the country that Xi Jinping’s regime does not care about international pressure. She’s never been suspected, charged or convicted of a crime, but has lived in a prison for eight years,” said Frances Eve, a researcher with the advocacy group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “Xi Jinping needs to let her go.”

Harassment and house arrest in China as Trump has 'beyond terrific' time

Human rights defenders and their families placed under heavy surveillance by Xi Jinping’s agents as US president is feted
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Li Wenzu, wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, during a protest in Beijing against the detention of human rights defenders. 

On day one of Donald Trump’s “state visit-plus” to China he was treated to a tour of the Forbidden City, a night at the opera and an intimate dinner with Xi Jinping. 

“Beyond terrific,” he boasted.

Trump's freak show

Li Wenzu got a loud knock at the door from a man claiming to represent the domestic security agency tasked with suppressing political dissent. 

“The US president is in town,” the 32-year-old mother-of-one says she was informed by the agent. “Do not go anywhere … you must cooperate with our work.”
Li is the wife of Wang Quanzhang, a crusading human rights lawyer whom she has not seen since the summer of 2015 when he was spirited into secret detention during a roundup of attorneys and activists known as Xi’s “war on law”.
With China’s leader out to impress his American guest, Li and dissidents like her say they have been placed under house arrest or heavy surveillance in a bid to stop them spoiling the show.
“[The authorities] are afraid of us meeting with foreign leaders, of our stories being heard by people all over the world, and of the truth being uncovered,” she said by phone on Thursday morning as Xi rolled out the red carpet for Trump in Tiananmen Square.
After the knock on her door at about 7am on Wednesday, Li said about a dozen plainclothes agents had camped outside her flat in west Beijing.

A photograph taken by Li Wenzu after plainclothes Chinese security agents were posted outside her flat.

When she tried to go out with her young son, she claimed one of the group “pushed me with his body and prevented us from going”.
“Shame on him!” Li said. 

“Just think about it, I don’t have the right to go anywhere in the country. It is ridiculous. I felt so powerless.”
Beijing-based activist He Depu told Radio Free Asia, a US-backed news website, other activists were also feeling the pinch because of Trump’s arrival: “All political dissidents are under surveillance right now.”

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was expelled from China last year after 23 days in secret detention, said authorities saw Li – who has campaigned relentlessly on behalf of her imprisoned husband -- as a “constant thorn in their side”. 

He called her treatment “unusual even for China” and symptomatic of a wider breakdown in the rule of law under Xi.
Dahlin, a friend of Li’s husband, said Wang had spent so long in secret detention that “at one point people were seriously wondering if he was even alive any more”. 

He is now thought to be behind bars in the northern city of Tianjin.
Trump has enraged human rights activists by courting China’s authoritarian leader despite what they call the government’s worst crackdown in decades. 

Trump has called Xi a friend and recently praised his “extraordinary elevation” and “great political victory” after he was anointed China’s most powerful leader since Mao.
On Wednesday, Republican senator Marco Rubio rejected that description: “Xi’s further consolidation of power, in a one-party communist state, was not a political victory. It was a tragedy for human rights advocates, reformers and thousands of political prisoners,” he tweeted.
Li Wenzu, who has not seen her husband since he was seized, said: “I hope [Trump] can show concern for human rights issues in China … He should think carefully about dealing with a country that does not care about human rights, and violates the law.
“It’s just like when we are making friends, we must first look at character of the person [we are befriending].”