Imprisoned Nobel peace winner asks spouse to receive prize

The spouse of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo who is serving an eleven-year punishment in China may receive the peace award in Norway on his behalf as there are slim chances that the dissident will be released on a medical parole, a human rights watchdog has said.

Liu has advised his wife to receive his Nobel Prize in Norway, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy quoted Liu Xia as saying.

During her brief discussion with her husband on Sunday in prison in Jinzhou, he had asked Liu Xia to accept the prize on his behalf.

The prize was due to be handed over in Oslo in December this year. Liu was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his determined campaign to restore democracy and human rights in China.

He was imprisoned for initiating the Charter 08 democracy campaign on the ground that amounted to "inciting subversion of state power". Liu Xia said the prison had given her husband a physical examination and had told him he had a severe gastric ulcer, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted the rights group as saying. It was still to be established whether he had been infected with hepatitis B, which the centre said would entitle him to release on medical parole.

He told her that he shared a cell with five other inmates, she said. It is to be seen whether China, which denounced the prize to Liu asserting that a popular Prize was given to a criminal, would consent his wife to travel to Oslo to receive it.