SALON

Monday, Dec 31, 2012 12:45 PM UTC

Chinese activists defy guards to visit Nobel wife

By

Topics: From the Wires,

BEIJING (AP) — Five Chinese activists defied security and made a brief visit to dissident Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xia, who has been confined under house arrest since her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago.

The rare visit Friday was captured on video by Beijing activist Hu Jia, who posted it on YouTube on Monday. Hu said the activists wanted to see Liu Xia on that day to mark her husband’s birthday.

“Since it was Liu Xiaobo’s birthday, we thought we would visit his wife and commemorate it with her since he can’t be with her,” Hu said.

Earlier this month, Associated Press reporters managed to visit her apartment while guards apparently stepped away, filming her first interview in 26 months. Liu was stunned by the visit, trembling uncontrollably and crying as she described how absurd and emotionally draining it had been to be kept locked in her home.

Liu Xiaobo is four years into an 11-year prison term for subversion for authoring and disseminating a programmatic call for democracy, Charter ’08. In awarding him the peace prize, the Nobel committee cited that proposal and his two decades of nonviolent struggle for civil rights.

Liu Xia has been held in her duplex apartment with no Internet or outside phone line and is allowed only weekly trips to buy groceries and visit her parents.

In the four-minute video of the activists’ visit on Friday, the activists are seen arguing with a man guarding the staircase leading to the couple’s apartment in Beijing.

They pushed past the guard and followed Liu Xia up the stairs to her apartment. There, Liu tearfully embraced her friend, Xu Youyu, a Beijing intellectual.

She whispered urgently in his ear, the anxiety etched on her face. She was apparently mindful of the authorities’ close surveillance of her home, which has been bugged, Hu said.

“Liu Xia was expressing to him her terror. She said the authorities were putting a lot of pressure on her and her family, and that they would have to bear the consequences for incidents like this,” Hu said.

Xu could not be reached on his cell phone.

The authoritarian government’s detention of the Liu couple, one in a prison 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast of Beijing and the other in a fifth-floor apartment in the capital, underscores its determination to keep the 57-year-old peace laureate from becoming an inspiration to other Chinese, either by himself or through her.

__

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJumioueaAo&feature=youtu.be&a

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation
57 points58 points | 3 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator who voted against federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
37 points38 points | comment
vote
"Apparently, we have deserving and undeserving disasters, Oklahoma senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn explain"
32 points33 points | 2 comments
vote
Obama opposes GOP bill on Keystone XL oil pipeline: The White House said Tuesday that the bill “seeks to circumvent longstanding and proven processes” by removing a requirement for a presidential permit. The legislation also says no new environmental studies are needed.
19 points20 points | 2 comments
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
21 points22 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations