The Chinese widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has appeared for the first time since her husband's funeral in an online video in which she said she was recuperating and asked for time to mourn.

Liu Xia had been under effective house arrest since her husband, a prominent dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, won the Nobel Prize in 2010. He died on July 13 after being denied permission to leave the country for treatment of late-stage liver cancer.

Liu Xia had been allowed to visit him in prison about once a month and to remain with him while he was treated in his final days.