China accused over 'enforced disappearance' of Liu Xiaobo's widow
Chinese authorities
are guilty of the Kafkaesque enforced disappearance of Liu Xia, the wife of
late Nobel laureate Liu
Xiaobo, the couple’s US lawyer has claimed. Jared Genser, a
Washington-based human rights attorney who has represented them since 2010,
made the claim in a formal complaint submitted to the United Nations on
Wednesday.
Almost three weeks
after the Chinese dissident became the
first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von
Ossietzky – who died in 1938 after years in Nazi concentration camps –
his widow’s precise whereabouts are a mystery. Friends say the
56-year-old poet was initially forced to travel to southwest China with
security agents, but may now have returned to the capital, where she has lived
under virtual house arrest since her
husband won the Nobel peace prize in December 2010. Foreign journalists
who have attempted to visit the couple’s Beijing flat have faced harassment and physical
violence while Chinese officials have refused to answer questions on
the subject.
Genser said Beijing’s
continued persecution of his client took Communist party repression to an
“incredibly disturbing new low” and constituted an enforced disappearance. In his petition to the
UN’s working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, requesting
“urgent intervention”, he wrote: “According to international law, an enforced
disappearance involves (1) deprivation of liberty against the will of the
person; (2) involvement of government officials; and (3) refusal to acknowledge
the deprivation of liberty or concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the
disappeared person.”
Genser told the
Guardian: “It is crystal clear to me that what has happened to Liu Xia falls
squarely and unequivocally within this definition.” Liu Xia was last seen
on 15 July when authorities released photographs showing her attending her
husband’s controversial
sea burial, which supporters suspect was devised to deny them a place to
remember the democracy icon and his ideas.“There has been no
information as to where she is, who is detaining her or when she might
reappear. [But] it is clear to me … that the Chinese government has her,” said
Genser. “She continues to suffer enormously … I actually don’t think Kafka
could have imagined a scenario as terrible as hers.” .. read more
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/03/china-enforced-disappearance-liu-xiaobo-widow-liu-xiaThe People's Republic of Thuggery - Chinese agents bar access to the 'free' wife of Liu Xiaobo
