Supporters of Liu Xia say that she is guilty of nothing but the ‘crime’ of being Liu Xiaobo’s wife

After her democracy activist husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Liu Xia was elated.

“I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I don’t know what to say,” the Chinese poet and painter told AFP over the telephone that October.

Ms. Liu thanked “all those people that have supported Liu Xiaobo” and “strongly asked” the Chinese government to release the dissident, who died on Thursday of liver cancer while on medical parole from an 11-year sentence for “subversion”.

Nearly seven years ago, neither Ms. Liu nor her husband’s supporters foresaw the repercussions the award would have on her: a writer and artist who never considered herself a political person, who unflinchingly supported Liu Xiaobo but never actively participated in his campaigns.

Limited access

Shortly after the Nobel announcement, Ms. Liu, 56, was put under house arrest, and has remained under heavy surveillance and control ever since. Close friends have said she has limited access to the outside world, and was only occasionally permitted to leave her Beijing apartment to visit her parents or her husband at his prison in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

At a private funeral before his cremation on Saturday, a grieving Liu Xia and relatives stood in front of her husband’s body, and she “fixed her eyes on him a long time, mumbling to say farewell”, Shenyang city official Zhang Qingyang told reporters.

Following Liu Xiaobo’s release on medical parole last month, the dissident requested to receive treatment abroad — an unfulfilled wish that friends believed was for Liu Xia’s sake. “If he doesn’t get out now,” Ye Du, another dissident and close family friend, told AFP during the illness, “then he has no way to obtain freedom for his beloved wife”.

The primary doctor responsible for Liu Xiaobo’s treatment said at a press conference late on Thursday that in the activist’s final moments, he told his wife to “live well”. But where Liu Xia will live — and whether she will live freely — remains unclear. Close friends have struggled to reach her since Liu Xiaobo’s death, and China has left unanswered the question of whether she will be allowed to leave the country.

The couple’s supporters often say that Liu Xia, who has never been formally charged, is guilty of nothing but the “crime” of being Liu Xiaobo's wife.