The widow of a Nobel Prize-winning dissident is ready to ‘die at home’

An exiled Chinese writer has said that Liu Xia, the widow of dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, told him in a phone conversation on Monday that she is ready to “die at home” in protest. Liu has been kept under house arrest for nearly eight years, and been unable to leave China.

Berlin-based writer Liao Yiwu wrote an open letter published on Wednesday by US-based human rights website China Change, which also carried a heartbreaking audio recording of an earlier phone conversation between Liao and Liu from April 8.

Liu herself has never been an activist.