Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, has issued an open letter to Xi Jinping highlighting her own illegal house arrest and her brother’s recent conviction for fraud, which supporters claim was politically motivated. Liu expressed hope that Xi’s ‘Chinese Dream‘ would not become, for people like her, a ‘Chinese Nightmare’. From Michael Martina at Reuters:
Liu Xia’s hand-written letter was posted in photos to Twitter by a lawyer for the family on Friday, days after a Chinese court jailed her brother, Liu Hui, for 11 years on fraud charges.
“Under today’s rule of law, what we should see from state authority is justice and not ruthless suppression based on violence,” Liu wrote to Xi, denouncing the sentence as unjust.
[…] Supporters of Liu Hui say his case was trumped up, aimed at thwarting the increasing attention by the rights community on the plight of Liu Xia, who has been effectively detained in her home since her husband Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Prize in 2010.
“No one has told me the reason for this house arrest … Possibly in this country being the wife of Liu Xiaobo is a crime,” she said. [Source]
Chinese and English versions of the letter have been posted to Google+.
Liu Xia has been mostly isolated since her house arrest began. Haunting footage of her smoking at her window emerged last autumn, and two groups, one of AP journalists and the other of activists including Hu Jia, managed to visit her in her apartment in December. Liu was allowed to attend her brother’s trial in April, shouting as she left the courthouse, “I’m not free – tell everybody I’m not free! I love you – I miss you.”
