If the reports that she’s been released to Germany are true, it would mark an end to nearly a decade of unofficial detention for Liu Xia—who has been kept under strict state surveillance since Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2010. The award came a year into Liu Xiaobo’s 11-year prison sentence for “subversion of state power” for co-authoring a manifesto in 2008 that called for fundamental changes in China’s governance. Few are allowed to visit her and plainclothes police patrol around her Beijing apartment. Those close to her say she suffers from heart ailments and depression, and has many times asked to leave China.
It’s also a big win for Germany, one of the few countries allowed to send a doctor to China last year to examine Liu Xiaobo. The country has been raising human rights issues and the situation of Liu Xia on multiple occasions with China, a major trade partner and investor. While in Beijing in May, German chancellor Angela Merkel met with the wife of a detained human rights lawyer. On the same visit, at a joint press conference with Merkel, Chinese premier Li Keqiang said China was prepared to discuss “relevant individual cases” with Germany. [...]
On Chinese social media, some are expressing their happiness for her—obliquely, of course, so as to avoid censorship. On the microblog Weibo, one user based in Germany wrote (link in Chinese), “Willkommen in Deutschland! Willkommen in die freie Welt!! Welcome to Germany, to the free world!”
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