DHARAMSHALA, JULY 9: A Beijing based Tibetan writer and her Chinese husband Wang Lixiong have been put under house arrest to prevent the couple from attending a dinner at the US Embassy residence on Wednesday as US Secretary of State John Kerry starts his China visit.
Woser and Wang Lixiong arrived in Beijing from Inner Mongolia on Tuesday evening. Within an hour of their arrival at their house officers form the State Security arrived at the door, Woser wrote in Chinese on her Facebook page.
The officers told the couple that they would be taking up their posts for the next two days and that the two were forbidden to go out. “I asked for the reason and they said that it was confidential. But I know that it’s because the day before yesterday an American Embassy official had called me on my mobile phone and invited me this evening to the embassy residence. Knowing that I was on the road and couldn’t participate, they’d set the date for the next day.”
Tsering Woeser was awarded the 2013 International Women of Courage Award by the U.S. State Department in March 2013, but was banned from traveling to Washington to receive the award.
At the award ceremony, Kerry praised Woeser for her courageous writings on Tibetan people and their causes at a time of deteriorating human rights. “Tsering Woeser has emerged as a clarion voice of the people, even as the Chinese government has worked to curtail the flow of information from Tibet,” Kerry said at the time.
“Afterwards Mr. Kerry especially wrote me a letter. If I were to see him on this occasion I would very much like to reply to his letter and express my thanks,” wrote Woser. “But most regrettably I am at home under house arrest.”
