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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Writer dedicates Nobel to slain activists

Liu Xiaobo, imprisoned in China, allowed to see wife

Barbara Demick Los Angeles Times

BEIJING – In the first whisper of a comment since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 48 hours earlier, imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo sent word through his wife Sunday that he would dedicate the award to activists killed during 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, according to a human rights organization.

The writer’s wife, who has been held virtually incommunicado for days by Chinese authorities, was able to talk briefly with her husband at Jinzhou Prison in northern China’s Liaoning province. Liu Xia used Twitter to inform supporters that her husband had wept at news of his award, and that she is now under house arrest.

“They were able to meet,” said U.S. activist Beth Schwanke of Freedom Now, a Washington-based organization that says it is providing legal representation to the couple. “He began crying as soon as he heard. He said he wanted to dedicate the prize to the martyrs of Tiananmen Square.”

Few other details about Sunday’s meeting were available because the writer’s wife, herself an activist, has been under close watch by Chinese authorities, who escorted her back to the couple’s home in Beijing after the meeting and confiscated her cell phone.

At one point, however, she was able to post a comment on Twitter in which she hinted at the couple’s despair at their simultaneous good fortune and immense tragedy.

According to the posting, which was verified by a friend, Liu Xiaobo had been informed Saturday afternoon that he’d won the Nobel Peace Prize.

China Daily denounced Liu as a “criminal who violated Chinese law.”

“Like it or not, the Nobel Peace Prize broadens the suspicion that there is a Western plot to contain a rising China,” the English-language daily said in an editorial posted on its website.