BEIJING: The wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo has filed an extraordinary appeal for his retrial, his lawyer said yesterday, in a move that could renew the focus on China’s human rights record.
The news comes two weeks ahead of a visit to China by US Vice President Joe Biden, during which human rights will likely be raised amid a broader crackdown on dissent and freedom of speech and assembly.
Liu, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the Chinese army, was jailed in 2009 for 11 years, on subversion charges for organising a petition urging the overthrow of one-party rule. He was the organiser of “Charter 08,” a manifesto for political reform.
His wife Liu Xia, who has been under effective house arrest since he won the Nobel Prize in 2010, met Liu in October in prison in northeastern Liaoning province and got his approval for the appeal, prominent human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping said.
“Whether Liu Xiaobo’s viewpoints in his articles are correct or wrong, whether he drafted “Charter 08” and whether those views are wrong or right, this is a citizen’s right to freedom of speech and expression,” Mo said.
Reuters
