The wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo leaves her house for the first time in two and a half years of illegal house arrest to attend her brother's fraud trial. She tells reporters who want to know whether her husband will be free that neither is free.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - "I'm not free," shouted Liu Xia, wife of jailed Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. "When they tell you I'm free, tell them I'm not," she said in her first appearance after being placed under de facto house arrest. Liu, a cosignatory to pro-democracy Charter 08, was going to court where her brother is on trial for fraud.

"I'm not free," Liu shouted at journalists who had approached her car to ask her if her husband would be released. "When they tell you I'm free, tell them I'm not," she insisted.

Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Prize despite China's fierce opposition, was jailed on Christmas day 2009. He is currently serving 11 years in jail in northern China and can see his older brothers only once or twice a year.

Liu Xia has been held illegally under house arrest since October of 2010 at her flat on the outskirts of Beijing.

For Chinese activists, the trial against her brother Liu Hui "clearly fits the pattern of harassment of activists' families."

Liu's lawyer Mo Shaoping said that his client has rejected all the accusations and insisted insisted that he was innocent.

Back in December, Liu Xia made the news when five Chinese activists defied security guards and made a brief visit to her house and captured the whole thing on video.

 

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