Liu Xia asks dissidents to accept Nobel Award on her husband’s behalf

(Oct.27,2010) In China, the wife of jailed Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, has called on his friends to go to Norway on 10 December, to accept the award on his behalf. Currently under house arrest without charges, Liu Xia made her request in a letter circulating online. “I believe that Xiaobo would definitely want his friends to attend this historic ceremony and share this honour,' she wrote. The letter calls on more than 100 Chinese dissidents, lawyers and professors to collect the prize on his behalf. However, since most of them are under tight police control and might not be able to leave the country, Liu Xiaobo’s brothers might have to go to the award ceremony.
In the meantime, international pressure for the dissident’s release is being stepped up. A group of 15 Nobel Prize laureates have written a letter to G20 leaders to get Beijing to free the jailed scholar. The letter is signed among others by former US President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, former South African President Fredrik de Klerk and Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.