International writers join Amnesty and PEN in calls for China to free Liu Xiaobo’s ‘helpless and hopeless’ widow
JM Coetzee and Paul Auster among writers who signed petition calling for her release as Chinese poet Ye Du says ‘there seems nothing left’ in her
Celebrated authors and international literary figures are demanding the release of Liu Xia, as years of house arrest reportedly take a psychological toll on the widow of dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Liu Xia’s mental health has recently worsened, friends of the 57-year-old poet, painter and photographer said, after hopes faded in recent months that she and her brother would be able to leave China.
“She is extremely helpless and hopeless now,” Ye Du, a poet and friend to Liu Xiaobo, told the South China Morning Post.
“The extended house arrest has wrecked her to a point now that there seems to be nothing left in her,” Ye said, calling her psychological condition “fairly awful”.
Liu Xia told her friend, the exiled Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, during a phone conversation early this month that she was “ready to die at home”, after being kept under house arrest for nearly eight years. She has never been charged with any offence by the Chinese authorities.
Chinese officials have maintained that Liu Xia is free, notwithstanding the daily restrictions and surveillance she faces.
Diplomats barred from visiting widow of Liu Xiaobo, sources say
But Liu Xia’s friends have said she has been cut off from the outside world since her husband’s death, and is taking medication for depression.