BEIJING, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The wife of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, was arrested after visiting her husband, a human rights group said.
After visiting her husband at a prison in northeastern China Sunday, rights officials said, Liu Xia was escorted back to Beijing, where she was placed under house arrest, The New York Times reported.
In Beijing, Liu's telephone and Internet communication were suspended and state security officers weren't allowing her to contact friends or the media, Human Rights in China said in a statement.
In addition, she can't leave her residence unless in a police vehicle and her brother's phone has been "interfered with," the statement said.
Liu, a leading dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square student movement, was arrested in December 2008 after co-authoring Charter 08, which calls for democratic reforms, and is serving an 11-year sentence for incitement to subvert state power. He also spent three years in a labor camp in the 1990s.
The Chinese government has described Liu's award as "blasphemy" and imposed a blackout on news about it. After Liu was announced as the Peace Prize laureate last week, the Foreign Ministry said the Nobel committee's decision "desecrates" the prize.
Prison officials told Liu he won the award before his wife's visit, the Times said. Liu Xia said her husband had told her, "This is for the lost souls of June 4," when hundreds of students in Beijing died as Chinese troops and tanks crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, the rights group said in its statement.
