Liu Xia's Chinese Nightmare

Liu Xia's handwritten letter to Xi Jinping published on Twitter

The wife of jailed activist and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo has written an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is dated June 12, a few days after her younger brother Liu Hui was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in jail for defrauding a contractor of 3 million RMB with a business partner.

President Xi Jinping:

I am Liu Xia, a citizen of the People's Republic of China. I have been under house arrest and have lost all my personal freedoms since October 2010. No one has told me any reasons for detaining me. I have thought about it over and over. Perhaps in this country it's a "crime" for me to be Liu Xiaobo's wife.

I think the prison sentence of my brother Liu Hui, which was handed down on June 9, 2013, is totally unjust. I doubt whether the judicial authorities and even the whole public power system were really administering their rights properly.

Under the current rule of law, we should see justice in state power, instead of ruthless crackdowns with violence; any events that erase individual rights will all cause tragedy, thus casting a dark shadow over the aura of the state power's legitimacy.

Justice in criminal cases will only be manifested in actual cases. I cannot imagine justice, which is what we're hoping for, would be realized through disrespecting and even disregarding the rights of the accused.

Mr. Chairman, the China Dream that you mentioned will have to be realized through every citizen. I hope the China Dream won't turn us individuals into the "China Nightmares."

Today is the traditional Chinese Duanwu Festival (Dragon Boat Festival). Can you ever imagine how our family is feeling during the celebrations?

Citizen Liu Xia
2013.6.12

We admire her bravery in managing to get this letter out in the open thanks to her lawyer Shang Baojun who posted pictures of it on Twitter.

Xi will not respond of course -- government leaders don't comment on individual cases. But this is the only way she knows of expressing her opinion about her tragic situation since she is cut off from the world, living under virtual house arrest, with no access to the internet or phones.

Average citizens won't have seen the letter either which is a pity -- they need to know Liu Xia's plight and rally around her and her family.

But it's not to be. Hopefully foreign governments and prominent people will put more pressure on China.

Again we ask on her behalf -- why is it a crime for her to be Liu Xiaobo's wife?