Liu Xia (artist)

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Liu Xia ( Chinese  劉霞 , Pinyin Liú Xiá ; born April 1, 1961 ) is a Chinese painter, poet and photographer. She was married to the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017).

Live and act

While working as a civil servant, Liu met her husband in the Beijing literary scene in the 1980s . She married Liu Xiaobo while he was imprisoned in a re-education center in 1996. Although Liu prefers a single life as an intellectual, she was often forced to take a stand for her husband and was considered his most important link with the outside world. As the wife of China's most famous human rights attorney, Liu herself has been subjected to repeated repression and has been under constant surveillance since her husband's arrest. Since her marriage, Liu had made repeated statements on the human rights situation in China, albeit more cautiously after her husband was arrested. Despite these circumstances, she continued to try to live as normal a life as possible.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison for co-authoring a political manifesto called Charter 08 . Liu Xia had previously warned her husband not to collaborate on the document. After initially sharing their concerns, Liu Xiaobo nevertheless participated in the creation of the document and devoted three years to it. He revised and partially rewritten the manifesto and then mailed it to over three hundred well-known workers, members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and intellectuals, asking them to sign. The text was later signed by around 10,000 users on the Internet.

Commenting on the announcement that her imprisoned husband would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Liu Xia commented that during all the years that Liu Xiaobo had persisted in advocating the truth in China, it was the fourth time that Liu Xiaobo had lost his freedom because of it have. After a subsequent prison visit, she was placed under house arrest and her cell phone number was deactivated.

On April 23, 2013, she was allowed to attend her brother's trial. According to many critics, the process was politically motivated. During her brief absence from house arrest - during which she was not allowed to use the internet or the phone and received few visitors - she was greeted by a crowd. Liu Xia was delighted to receive this attention, but also criticized her treatment by the Chinese state.

On November 19, 2013, she submitted a request to retrial her husband - an unusual move as it brought the global community's attention back to China's human rights abuses. According to her attorney, Liu visited her husband in Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province and received his support for her project prior to the application.

After Liu Xiaobo's death in July 2017, western states and human rights activists called on China to allow Liu Xia to leave the country unconditionally. However, the Chinese authorities initially did not comply with this request. At the beginning of November 2017, at the suggestion of the writers' association PEN America, a letter was published which again demanded their release and, among other things. a. mentioned her poor health. The 52 signatories included JM Coetzee , Philip Roth and Anne Tyler .

As an artist, Liu created The Silent Strength of Liu Xia, a collection of 25 black-and-white pictures that she had created between 1996 and 1999 while her husband was imprisoned in a labor camp for the second time . The collection was exhibited in the USA . Long-time friend of Liu Xia and her husband's Guy Sorman helped bring the images out of China and curated the exhibition at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University .

On July 10, 2018, Liu's house arrest was lifted after eight years and she was allowed to travel to Germany for medical treatment, where she arrived on the same day.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wife of Nobel Peace Prize Winner: 'Government Officials Like to Make People Suffer'. In: Spiegel Online. Retrieved October 14, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner talks about daily struggle. In: dw.com. October 8, 2010, accessed October 14, 2016 .
  3. ^ Tania Branigan: My dear husband Liu Xiaobo, the writer China has put behind bars . In: The Guardian . February 27, 2010, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 14, 2016]).
  4. ^ Nobel winner's wife: Peace prize brings hope of change. In: msnbc.com. October 8, 2010, accessed October 28, 2016 .
  5. ^ Jailed Chinese dissident wins Nobel Peace Prize. In: thestar.com. Retrieved October 28, 2016 .
  6. ↑ China dissident's wife pleads for detained husband. In: Reuters India. Retrieved October 28, 2016 .
  7. ^ A b Andrew Jacobs, Jonathan Ansfield: Nobel Peace Prize Given to Jailed Chinese Dissident. In: nytimes.com. October 2, 2010, accessed December 8, 2017 .
  8. ↑ a b Wife of jailed Chinese Nobel Laureate appeals for his retrial. In: Reuters. November 19, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  9. ^ Tania Branigan: Liu Xia defiant as she appears in public for first time in two years . In: The Guardian . April 23, 2013, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed December 8, 2016]).
  10. ↑ Writers appeal to China in the case of Liu Xia. In: n-tv.de , November 3, 2017. Accessed November 3, 2017.
  11. ↑ China lets the widow of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo leave the country . Zeit Online, July 10, 2018.
  12. ↑ Liu Xia arrived in Berlin , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on July 10, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Liu, Xia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese painter, poet and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1961