Writer gets surprise call from jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo’s wife
Tsering Woeser says she has heard from from Liu Xia, the wife of China’s jailed Nobel peace laureate
Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser said she has received a phone call from Liu Xia, the wife of jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
The writer posted on social media that she was shocked to receive the phone call on Wednesday.
Liu Xia has been kept incommunicado by authorities since her husband was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for subversive charges.
“She said she was just trying to make a phone call, to see if she could make it,” Woeser said. “I told her that I saw pictures of her having meals with friends and thought she was better now.”
“And she said that she was just a sick person pretending to be in good shape.”
Woeser wrote that Liu said over the phone “I am Liu Xia” twice. The writer said she would try calling Liu in the future.
Liu Xia’s husband, who co-authored and gathered signatures for a document promoting democratic reforms, is serving his sentence in Liaoning. Liu Xia was placed under house arrest even though she was not accused of any wrongdoing.
In a brief conversation with journalists from the Associated Press four years ago, Liu Xia compared her situation to a Kafka story, saying she was living in an “absurd place”.