Detained wife of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner speaks out

BEIJING (AP) - Mrs Liu Xia trembled uncontrollably and cried on Thursday as she described how her confinement under house arrest has been absurd and emotionally draining in the two years since her jailed activist husband, Mr Liu Xiaobo, was named a Nobel Peace laureate in 2010.

Breathless from disbelief at receiving unexpected visitors into her home and with a shaking voice, Mrs Liu spoke in her first interview in 26 months - a brief conversation with journalists from The Associated Press who managed to visit her apartment while the guards who watch it apparently stepped away for lunch.

Mrs Liu said her continuing house arrest has been painfully surreal and in stark contrast to China's celebratory response to this year's Chinese victory among the Nobels - literature prize winner Mo Yan. Mrs Liu said she has been confined to her duplex apartment in downtown Beijing with no Internet or outside phone line and is only allowed weekly trips to buy groceries and visit her parents.

"We live in such an absurd place," she said. "It is so absurd. I felt I was a person emotionally prepared to respond to the consequences of Liu Xiaobo winning the prize.