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In the fall of 2010, Liu Xia went to a prison in northeastern China to tell her husband, the intellectual dissident Liu Xiaobo, that he was coming to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It was the last time she was leaving the house as a free woman.
Until Tuesday, China allowed Liu Xia to travel to Berlin, ending eight years of house arrest that drew international criticism. 57 year old poet, bald, with a shaved head, a tragic icon known throughout the world
Liu Xia got off a plane Tuesday in Helsinki, Finland, for a transfer to Berlin, she traded the arms and smiles broadly at a photographer waiting. His plane from Helsinki landed in the German capital a few hours later and we saw him enter a car at Tegel Airport in Berlin
The release of Liu Xia, who was born Has never been charged with a crime, results from Western military campaigns. governments and activists and comes a few days before the first anniversary of Liu Xiaobo's death. Liu's 11-year prison sentence and the subsequent detention of his wife at home became blatant symbols of the authoritarian government's determination to prevent the couple from becoming an inspiration to other Chinese people. his new life, "wrote Liu Xia's brother, Liu Hui, on a social media site." Thank you to everyone who has helped and cared for these few years and I hope his life will now be peaceful and happy. "
Liu Xia arrived in Germany while Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on official visit to the country, which is among those who I urged Beijing to release her.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel regularly meets with dissidents during visits to China and raised the issue of Liu Xia c Liu's close friends, Gao Yu, a veteran journalist in Beijing, and Wu Yangwei, better known by his name Feather Ye Du, told Liu Xia took a Finnair flight to Berlin on Tuesday morning. Wu said that he had talked to Liu Xia's older brother, Liu Tong.
"Liu Xia has been isolated for so many years," Wu said on the phone from Guangzhou City in the south of the country. "I hope that being in a free country will allow Liu Xia to heal her trauma and her injuries."
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Liu Xia was going for medical treatment. Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo dies "class =" trb_em_ic_img "title =" Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo dies "data-c-nd =" 2048×1404 "/> [19659013LiuXiaisIn2009ChinasentencedLiuXiaoboto11yearsinprisonforincitingsubversionaftertakingpartinthedraftingofCharter08amanifestocallingforpoliticalandeconomicliberalization
Liu received the Nobel Prize on October 8, 2010. As soon as Liu Xia returned home after visiting her husband in prison that month, she was locked in her fifth-floor apartment in Beijing Internet
At first she was optimistic his containment would be brief, telling AP reporters at the time: "I believe that they will not continue like this forever."
But the days turned into months, then years
The guards ate and slept outside Her door, chasing out sympathizers, activists, journalists and diplomats – a slow burning ordeal worse than death, she said in a rare recording that emerged in May.
"If I can not leave, I will die" Liu Xia told his close friend Liao Yiwu, a writer who documented their phone conversation in an essay published in May.
Liu's friends said that her psychological state was deteriorating, especially since the death of her husband, 19659002] "Xiaobo is gone, and there is nothing in the world for me now," said Liu in tears to Liao. Better to die than to live, using death to defy could not be simpler for me. "
Liu's release was good news for China's beleaguered community of militants, which was the subject of A large crackdown on civil society, rights advocates and other independent groups the administration of President Xi Jinping deems a threat to the hold of the ruling Communist Party.The last time that China let go of a political prisoner in 2012, the activist blind iste Chen Guangcheng was allowed to fly to New York after escaping house arrest and hiding for six days at the US Embassy in Beijing. Still holding Liu Xia's brother, Liu Hui, who has been convicted of fraud and jailed in a case that supporters claim to be in retaliation for the attention given to the Nobel laureate.
"This is fantastic news," said Hu Jia, a family friend and Beijing-based activist. "But we still fear for Liu Hui, who is kept in the country as a guarantee for Liu Xia do not speak abroad. "
China criticized Western governments' calls for Liu's release as interference in her internal affairs She claimed that Liu Xia was free
The year Lastly, she appeared pale, emaciated and gloomy in images published by the authorities while she was treating Liu Xiaobo just before her death from a liver cancer in a hospital in police custody. She was shown to Her burial was tightly dressed and wearing dark sunglasses while she grabbed a photograph of her husband.
Liu Xiaobo was only the second Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die while in police custody. the line more and more of the The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died of tuberculosis in Germany in 1938 while he was imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler
Frances Eve, researcher for Chinese human rights defenders, said the release of Liu Xia was supposed to dampen criticism. "I think the government wanted to try to save face, and give the impression that it is a country ruled by law when everything related to its case has demonstrated that it is not the only way it is. is not, "said Eve. "She was an unintentional symbol of the brutal treatment of human rights activists by China."
Shih reported from Beijing. Christopher Bodeen, writer of the Associated Press, and Yanan Wang contributed to this report.
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