Beijing (CNN) The widow of the late Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has made a desperate cry for help, friends say, as the Chinese government refuses to let her travel abroad for medical treatment nearly 10 months after her husband's death.

"Xiaobo is gone and there's nothing in the world for me now," Liu Xia on Monday told a longtime friend, who posted her words in a detailed Facebook post along with an audio clip of an earlier conversation.

"It's easier to die than to live. For me, using death to fight back can't be any simpler."

Liu Xiaobo died of lung cancer last July in a hospital in northeastern China, a month after he was granted medical parole from a 11-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion of state power."

His conviction in late 2009 stemmed from his co-authorship of a manifesto calling for human rights and political reform in China.

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