China’s jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) was briefly allowed out of prison last month after his father died, his brother said, in an unusual break in the dissident’s 11-year term.
Liu Xiaoxuan (劉曉暄) said he had also been able to visit his 55-year-old brother in jail last week and the inmate’s wife, Liu Xia (劉霞), who has effectively been under house arrest since the prize announcement in October last year, visited in August.
The news is the first to have emerged in almost a year from the prison in China’s northeast where the dissident writer is being held and comes just three days before this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is announced in Oslo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee sparked fury in Beijing last year when it honored the former university professor with the peace prize for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”
The award turned Liu Xiaobo — who until then had been little known abroad — into a global cause celebre as Western nations and rights groups lined up to call for his release.
Liu Xiaoxuan said his elder brother “was sent back home on Sept. 18” to mark the seventh day after his father’s death — an important day in Chinese culture when families gather to remember the person who died.
The Chinese often hold a person’s funeral three days after their death and normally hold a smaller memorial service on the seventh day.
“It’s not convenient for me to tell you about details of how long Liu Xiaobo stayed at home or what he did,” Liu Xiaoxuan said.
However, Liu Xiaoxuan said he had been able to see his elder brother last Wednesday, when he paid him a visit in prison along with his two other siblings, adding that the jailed writer “was looking very well.”
He was reluctant to give any more details. Calls to police in Liaoning Province’s Jinzhou City — where Liu is being held — and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security went unanswered.
Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in jail in December 2009 for “subversion” after co-authoring “Charter 08,” a bold petition calling for political reform in one-party China.
He is one of only three people to win the Peace Prize while in prison, after 1991 laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who was in a Nazi jail when he won in 1935.
His award triggered a crackdown on dissent by Beijing, which further intensified in February after anonymous calls for Arab-style protests in China emerged on the Internet.
Many leading activists and rights lawyers disappeared into custody, including prominent artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), who was detained in April for nearly three months.
China’s government is currently considering amendments to the criminal code that would allow police to secretly detain suspects for up to six months without charges and without notifying their families.
The news of Liu’s trip comes as the Nobel Committee prepares to announce the winner of this year’s peace prize in Oslo on Friday, amid speculation cyberactivists from North Africa are front runners after the Arab Spring uprisings.
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