Jailed China Nobel laureate asks in message to remember others

BEIJING (Reuters) - Jailed Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo has managed to send a rare message to a friend living outside China saying he is fine but the world should not forget others like him who have been locked up. Writer Liao Yiwu, who lives in exile in Germany, said on his Facebook page late on Thursday he had received the message from Liu on Tuesday via "private contacts". "I am OK. Here in prison, I have continually been able to read and think. In my studies, I have become even more convinced I have no personal enemies," Liu wrote, in the message Liao posted on Facebook. "I hope the world could pay more attention to other victims who are not well-known, or not known at all!" Liao said the source of his message was reliable, but that he could not say who it was. Liu, 58, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the army, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on subversion charges for organizing a petition urging an end to one-party rule. He won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, has been put under effective house arrest since shortly after her husband won the prize, ostensibly to prevent her from talking to the media. President Xi Jinping's government has convicted and detained hundreds of people in the past two years or so in what rights groups say is the most severe assault on human rights in China since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)