Hong Kong activists tied black ribbons to security fences outside the Chinese government's office in the city Friday to mark one year since the death in custody of Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo.

A veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Liu died from liver cancer while serving an 11-year sentence for "subversion" on the mainland.

Dozens of pro-democracy campaigners gathered outside China's liaison office in the semi-autonomous city, ahead of a larger public memorial event due to take place in the evening.

The commemorations come three days after Liu's widow, Liu Xia, arrived in Germany after eight years of de facto house arrest in Beijing.

Activists attached a picture of Liu Xiaobo to the wall outside the liaison office, tied black ribbons to metal barriers there and burnt incense and threw paper money traditionally offered to the dead.

The group also called for the release of prominent Chinese democracy activist Qin Yongmin, who was jailed for 13 years on the mainland Wednesday for "subversion of state power".

They also called for the release of lawyers arrested in the "709 crackdown" of 2015, which marked the largest ever clampdown on the legal profession in China.

"(The Chinese government) released Liu Xia on Tuesday, then jailed Qin Yongmin on Wednesday," said veteran democracy activist Leung Kwok-hung, known as "Long Hair".

"So to release Liu Xia was an act to hoodwink the public and pretend to show mercy," he told reporters.

Pro-democracy lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki called for freedom of speech and elections in China, as campaigned for by Liu Xiaobo.

He said China's release of Liu Xia was a bid to woo European allies in the face of a trade war with the United States.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam was blasted by democracy campaigners after she described the freeing of Liu Xia as an "act of humanitarianism".

Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo grilled her over that statement in a heated exchange in the legislature Thursday, asking Lam whether she was a "Beijing groveller".

Liu Xiaobo was arrested in late 2008 after co-authoring Charter 08, a widely circulated online petition that called for political reform in the Communist-ruled nation.

The bold manifesto, which was signed by more than 10,000 people after it went online, called for the protection of basic human rights and the reform of China's one-party system.

Liu Xia had faced no charges but endured heavy restrictions on her movements and was kept under constant surveillance since 2010 when her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize, infuriating Chinese authorities.

Liu Xia: the apolitical poet who became a dissident's wife
Beijing (AFP) July 10, 2018 - When her democracy activist husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Liu Xia was elated.

"I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I don't know what to say," the Chinese poet and painter told AFP over the telephone that October.

She thanked "all those people that have supported Liu Xiaobo" and "strongly asked" the Chinese government to release the dissident, who died a year ago of liver cancer while on medical parole from an 11-year sentence for "subversion".

Nearly eight years ago, neither Liu nor her husband's supporters foresaw the repercussions the award would have on her: a writer and artist who never considered herself a political person. She unflinchingly supported Liu Xiaobo but never actively participated in his campaigns.

Shortly after the Nobel announcement, Liu, 57, was placed under effective house arrest, where she remained under heavy surveillance and control until her stunning release on Tuesday.

Close friends said she had limited access to the outside world, and was only occasionally permitted to leave her Beijing apartment to visit her parents or her husband at his prison in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

At a private funeral before his cremation, a grieving Liu Xia and relatives stood in front of her husband's body, and she "fixed her eyes on him a long time, mumbling to say farewell", Shenyang city official Zhang Qingyang told reporters.

Following Liu Xiaobo's release on medical parole last June, the dissident requested permission to receive treatment abroad -- an unfulfilled wish that friends believed was for Liu Xia's sake.

"If he doesn't get out now," Ye Du, another dissident and close family friend, told AFP at the time, "then he has no way to obtain freedom for his beloved wife."

The primary doctor responsible for Liu Xiaobo's treatment said at a press conference late Thursday that in the activist's final moments, he told his wife to "live well".

But for almost a year that wish has remained out of reach, as she has remained under house arrest in her residential compound in Beijing, where friends said she was losing her will to live.

"They should add a line to the constitution: 'Loving Liu Xiaobo is a serious crime -- it's a life sentence'", she told one close friend in an emotional phone call last month.

- 'At the edge' -

"I didn't have a chance/ to say a word before you became/ a character in the news,/ everyone looking up to you/ as I was worn down/ at the edge of the crowd," Liu Xia once wrote in a poem to her husband.

It was a shared love of literature that brought the two intellectuals together in the 1980s.

She was an effervescent young poet, painter and photographer; he a public intellectual.

"She was not part of our group of dissidents," Hu Jia, a Beijing-based activist and friend of Liu Xiaobo, told AFP.

"When I visited Xiaobo, she wouldn't get involved with our political discussions. She just came out once in a while to share a laugh."

The couple's supporters often say that Liu Xia, who has never been formally charged, is guilty of nothing but the "crime" of being Liu Xiaobo's wife.

"I want to marry that enemy of the state!" she said shortly before the pair wed in 1996 during Liu Xiaobo's stay at a labour camp, according to a biography of the dissident by Yu Jie.

In turn, Liu Xiaobo lamented the political web in which Liu Xia had become entangled.

"My love for you," he said in his final public statement, "is so full of remorse and regret that it at times makes me stagger under its weight."

At the start of her house arrest, Liu Xia posted regular wry updates on Twitter for her concerned friends.

"It's me, dummy Liu, no need to worry," read her last tweet on October 18, 2010.

Sometimes the posts would sink into melancholy: "Why do we have to live this kind of life?" she wrote on June 16, 2010.

Virtually all of her friends' attempts to visit her were stymied by the guards that stood sentry outside her apartment at all times.

Through the years of detention, Liu has suffered from depression and a heart condition and both of her parents died.

On a rainy night in the summer of 2012, Hu stood outside Liu's apartment and aimed a laser pointer at the window of her study.

Liu looked out, but didn't see him.

"She was just standing there alone, smoking a cigarette," Hu said. "She looked so lonely."

"(Now) our most important goal is to save Liu Xia from the bitter sea."

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Chinese democracy activist sentenced to 13 years for 'subversion'
Beijing (AFP) July 11, 2018
A prominent Chinese political campaigner was sentenced to 13 years in jail on Wednesday, a court in central China said. Qin Yongmin was found "guilty of subversion of state power," the Wuhan City Intermediate People's Court said on its official website. According to court records, it appears to be the heftiest sentence handed down in China for "subversion" in the past 15 years. The 64-year-old, first jailed as a "counter-revolutionary" from 1981-1989, has already spent a total of 22 years b ... read more