China allows Nobel Peace Prize laureate to meet wife

In the first whisper of a comment since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 48 hours earlier, imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo sent word through his wife Sunday that he would dedicate the award to activists killed during 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, according to a human rights organization.

The writer’s wife, who has been held under house arrest, was escorted by police to Jinzhou Prison in northern China’s Liaoning province where she was able to speak with her husband.

“We saw each other for one hour,” she told supporters via a Twitter post Monday morning. She said her husband wept when he talked of those killed at Tiananmen Square. “He told me that the award is for all of the dead. They spent their lives practicing democracy, freedom and peace, and the spirit of nonviolence.”

“They were able to meet,” confirmed U.S. activist Beth Schwanke of Freedom Now, a Washington-based organization that says it is providing legal representation to the couple. “He began crying as soon as he heard. He said he wanted to dedicate the prize to the martyrs of Tiananmen Square.”

Liu was at Columbia University in New York in 1989 when the demonstrations began, but rushed home to advise students. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when authorities cracked down.

Few other details about Sunday’s meeting were available because the writer’s wife, also an activist, has been under close watch by Chinese authorities, who escorted her back to the couple’s home in Beijing after the meeting and confiscated her cellphone.

In an earlier post on Twitter, she wrote, “I have been under house arrest since and have no idea when I can see you all. My cellphone is ruined so I am not able to pick up any phone.”

According to her posting, which was verified by a friend, Liu Xiaobo, 54, had been informed Saturday afternoon that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award is among the most prestigious in the world and includes $1.5 million.

Liu Xia is an artist and poet who, like her husband, wears wire-rim glasses and her hair closely trimmed. The couple married in the 1990s when he was in prison on political charges.

“Liu Xia is under enormous pressure,” Yang Jianli, one of her legal representatives, said in a statement released Sunday by Freedom Now. “We hope that world leaders will immediately condemn this shameful act by the Chinese government and urge Liu Xia’s immediate and unconditional release.”

On Monday, the China Daily denounced Liu as a “criminal who violated Chinese law.”

“Like it or not, the Nobel Peace Prize broadens the suspicion that there is a Western plot to contain a rising China,” the English-language newspaper said in an editorial posted on its website.

This is the third time the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a political prisoner. The most notable precedent came in 1991, when it went to Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi — then, as now, under house arrest.

barbara.demick@latimes.com