The wife of the world’s newest Nobel Peace Prize winner was kept from seeing her dissident husband in prison yesterday and instead was expected to see him today and give him the news of his award.
Police kept reporters away from the prison where democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, and the mobile phone of his wife, Liu Xia (劉霞), was cut off. The Chinese government continued to censor reports about Liu’s award.
However, one of Liu Xiaobo’s brothers, Liu Xiaoxuan (劉曉暄), said the prison meeting would be today, citing information from Liu Xia’s mother.
He did not say why the meeting apparently had been delayed.
Chinese authorities, who called Liu a criminal shortly after his award on Friday and said his winning “desecrates the prize,” sank yesterday into official silence. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) didn’t answer a question about the prize that was submitted on Friday for a joint news conference in Turkey with that country’s prime minister.
Only the state-run Global Times newspaper spoke out. An editorial in its Chinese-language edition called the award “an arrogant showcase of Western ideology” and said it disrespected the Chinese people.
However, one Chinese newspaper cartoonist, Kuang Biao, posted an image on his blog on Friday of a Nobel prize medal behind bars.
Another well-known blogger, Ran Yunfei (冉雲飛), wrote yesterday: “In an era in which the Internet is gradually making information available to everyone, trying to hide from any Chinese the news that Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize is hopelessly stupid behavior — the more one tries to hide it, the more obvious it becomes.”
Some of China’s most prominent activist lawyers said they were being harassed by police as they took advantage of the peace prize to try to reconcile differences among themselves.
Lawyers Pu Zhiqiang (浦志強), Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) and others said they were not allowed to leave their homes.
“The government doesn’t know how to react to the news of Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel prize,” Pu said. “They are nervous, fearful and are acting chaotically.”
Another group of Chinese wrote an open letter to police protesting the detention of other activists who tried to celebrate the peace prize on Friday but said they were too scared to turn in the letter.
US President Barack Obama, last year’s peace prize winner, has called for Liu’s immediate release.
But there was still no word from the winner himself, or his wife, who had been in police custody.
“She’s disappeared. We’re all worried about them,” said Liu Xiaobo’s lawyer, Shang Baojun.
Beth Schwanke with the Washington-based Freedom Now, an organization that serves as Liu’s international counsel, said: “We’re very concerned that the government might use this as a pretext for detaining her.”
Liu Xiaobo’s wife has said she hoped to go to Norway to collect the Nobel medal and its prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (about US$1.5 million), if he cannot.
Shang said it was not likely that winning the prize would have any big effect on Liu Xiaobo’s prison sentence.
“Unless [President] Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) signs some sort of special order ... but there’s no precedent for that,” the lawyer said.
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