Jailed China Nobel winner asks wife to collect prize

Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has asked his wife to travel to Norway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize, she said today.

“Xiaobo told me he hopes I can go to Norway to receive the prize for him,” Liu Xia said by telephone from her house where she is under virtual house arrest.

“I think it will be very difficult,” she added, when asked if she thought the government would allow her to go.

Liu Xia said the government had not yet explicitly told her she would not be allowed to go to Norway. The prize will be formally bestowed on December 10 in Oslo.

China said today that giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed dissident showed a lack of respect for its legal system, in further criticism of an award that has stirred tensions over human rights.

Liu Xia, the wife of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, holds a photo of her husband during an interview in Beijing October 3, 2010. She has been asked by her husband to collect the prize on his behalf