Berlin/Beijing — Poet Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, was allowed to leave China and travel to Europe, ending her long house arrest, after a high-profile German-led diplomatic push. Liu Xia, who was placed under house arrest after her husband’s subversion conviction in 2009, had left Beijing "to start a new life", her brother, Liu Hui, said on the WeChat messaging platform on Tuesday. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs later confirmed the Beijing-based poet’s departure, saying she went to Germany to seek medical treatment. "The Chinese government is handling this issue in accordance with the law," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing. Liu Xia, 57, had been kept under police surveillance despite having never been charged with a crime. She was released almost a year after her husband succumbed to liver cancer in a secure Beijing hospital bed, the first Nobel laureate to die under guard since pacifist and Nazism critic Carl vo...
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