Nobel laureate's wife barred from meeting Norway officials

The wife of jailed Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo said Wednesday she was prevented from meeting with Norwegian diplomats as authorities kept her under tight house arrest, reports the AFP.

Liu Xia has been largely confined to her home since Friday when the Nobel Committee in Oslo awarded this year's prize to her dissident husband for advocating political reform and respect for human rights in China.

"Yesterday, Norwegian diplomats came to offer support for me and were barred outside the main gates," she said on her Twitter account.

Liu Xia said Tuesday she hoped to travel to Norway to accept the award for her husband, who was sentenced last December to 11 years in jail on subversion charges after co-authoring "Charter 08", which calls for bold political reform.

The Norwegian embassy confirmed that two diplomats had gone to visit her, but did not gain access to her apartment. They were "outside the gates of her compound, (having come) to check on her condition," embassy spokeswoman Tone Helene Aarvik told AFP, refusing to provide more details.

Liu Xia has been communicating with the outside world via Twitter after her cellphone was cut off earlier in the week.
A replacement phone now has also been cut off, Liu said in a tweet late Tuesday.

"I had the phone for only a day and already it has been cut off by the hoodlums," she said in the one-line post.

One of her husband's lawyers said on Wednesday they also had no way of reaching her.

"We can't contact her at the moment. We are just waiting and hopefully we can find a way to get in touch soon," attorney Shang Baojun told AFP.

Liu Xia has sent a handful of messages via her Twitter account Liuxia64 with brief updates on her situation since Friday.
She has been under house arrest since the award was announced, except for a weekend trip under police escort to the prison in northeastern China where her husband is jailed.