China keeps wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner under close supervision

BEIJING — The wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, herself now under de facto house arrest, said on Tuesday that the police guarding her home and restricting her movements have so far provided no legal documents explaining the situation.

The disclosure came on a day when the Chinese Foreign Ministry slammed last week’s Nobel recognition of Liu Xiaobo as “disrespectful” to China, and a U.S. embassy spokesman in Beijing called for Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, to be released from any sort of custody.

Speaking by a cell phone brought by a family member, Liu Xia said that the police have told her she’s not allowed to speak with media or meet with friends. If she wants to visit family or go to the grocery store, Liu said, it has to be in a police car and under close supervision.

“I don’t know when they will let me go,” said Liu Xia, who’s been under guard since her husband’s award was announced on Friday, and has done few interviews since that evening. “The police don’t know either, they’re just waiting for their orders.”

In choosing Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize committee said the award was meant to highlight the lack of human rights in China. Liu Xiaobo is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for his role in drafting a political manifesto calling for greater political and human rights protections in China.

So far, the Chinese government’s reaction has been to keep Liu in prison, hold his wife under apparently extra-legal detention, threaten many other dissidents to keep their mouths shut, and suppress any unauthorized reporting about the prize.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu lashed out anew at the Nobel committee.

After saying the award was disrespectful to China’s judicial system, Ma suggested it was being used to try to interfere with the country’s internal politics.

The situation highlights tensions between comments by senior Chinese leadership about the government’s desire to push forward with social reform, and an often harsh reality for dissidents who call for such change.

In an interview with CNN aired earlier this month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that “the people's wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible.” Wen also emphasized that the government should “abide by the constitution and laws without any exception.”

Mo Shaoping, whose law firm represents Liu Xiaobo, said that Liu Xia’s current detention isn’t supported by Chinese law.

“In China, it’s something used to confine citizens’ freedom,” Mo said. “There’s no legal term for this.”

The U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing, Richard Buangan, said in an e-mail that “We remain concerned by multiple reports that Liu Xia is being confined to her home in Beijing … her rights should be respected, and she should be allowed to move freely without harassment.”

Using house detentions to make people essentially disappear, without formally arresting them, has been a common tactic for dealing with dissidents in China, said Joshua Rosenzweig, the Hong Kong-based senior research manager for human rights group Dui Hua.

“Procedural rights have never been the highest priority in Chinese law, it’s much more about outcomes,” said Rosenzweig, whose organization does advocacy work for political prisoners in China. “And the desired outcome here is keeping people where you can control them.”

Trying to forbid Liu Xia from meeting with the media falls in line with the Chinese government’s approach so far to the Nobel Prize – limiting public awareness in China of Liu Xiaobo and his work.

The Chinese government initially blocked all news of the prize and then over the weekend began allowing domestic news publications to repeat the Foreign Ministry position that Liu is a criminal. That was followed by an editorial in state newspapers saying that “the Noble Peace Prize has been reduced to a political tool serving Western interests.”

During interviews in central Beijing this week, very few people had heard of either Liu or the award.

“Liu Xiaobo? I don’t know who that is,” said Li Tangsheng, 61, who was selling newspapers on a street side stand.

Told that Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese man who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, Li responded: “People will know about this only if it’s published in the newspapers.”

Last week there had been articles saying the prize would be awarded, Li explained, but then he saw nothing about who’d actually won. He began flipping through the newspapers in front of him to find some mention of what happened. There was none.

Down the block, Wang Yucun manages a larger newsstand with several dozen magazine and newspaper titles for sale.

“I read all of the headlines in the morning,” she said.

Had she seen news about the Nobel prizes this year? Wang, 37, named the winners for medicine and literature.

And the Peace Prize? Wang paused. “It’s not clear to me why there’s been news about the other Nobel Prize winners but not that one,” she said.

Did she know who Liu Xiaobo is? Wang turned from the translator who’d posed the question and pointed at a reporter, asking, in all seriousness, “Is he Liu Xiaobo?”.