Liu dedicates Nobel prize to Tiananmen victims

Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has tearfully dedicated his award to victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, activists said, as his wife was held under house arrest on Monday.
‘This award is for the lost souls of June Fourth,’ the US-based group Human Rights in China quoted Liu Xiaobo as telling his wife Liu Xia, referring to the bloody June 4, 1989 crackdown on democracy protests at the vast Beijing square.
The 54-year-old writer, who was jailed for 11 years in December after authoring a bold petition calling for democratic reforms, was awarded the prize by the Oslo-based committee Friday, sparking a furious reaction from Beijing.
Leaders around the world including the US president, Barack Obama, — last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner — lauded the 2010 winner and called on the Chinese government to release him immediately.




Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, also on Monday criticised China’s irate response.
The Dalai Lama told Kyodo News during a stopover at Tokyo’s Narita airport that the Chinese government does ‘not appreciate different opinions at all’.
He also said building an open and transparent society is ‘the only way to save all people of China’ but that some ‘hardliners’ inside the leadership were stuck in an ‘old way of thinking.’
Via her Twitter account, Liu Xia said she had been placed under house arrest at her Beijing home both before and after travelling to the prison in north-eastern China where her husband is being held to inform him of his prize.
‘Brothers, I have returned home. On the eighth of October they placed me under house arrest. I don’t know when I will be able to see anyone,’ said the Sunday night Twitter posting.
‘My mobile phone has been broken and I cannot call or receive calls. I saw Xiaobo and told him on the ninth at the prison that he won the prize. I will let you know more later. Everyone, please help me retweet. Thanks,’ she said.
Liu Xiaobo’s wife was taken to the prison under police guard, his lawyers said at the weekend.
At least two dozen police, plainclothes officers and other security personnel were seen deployed Monday at the compound where Liu Xia lives, interrogating returning residents and preventing journalists from entering.
Calls to her mobile phone were met with a recording saying it was out of service.
Liu Xiaobo is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize issued by the Oslo-based Nobel committee and China immediately lashed out at the award, calling it ‘blasphemy’, and labelling Liu a ‘criminal’.
Source: Agence France-Presse . Beijing