China on Monday blocked European officials from meeting with the wife of the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner, cut off her phone communication and canceled meetings with Norwegian officials — acting on its fury over the award.

As China retaliated, U.N. human rights experts called on Beijing to free imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo, who was permitted a brief, tearful meeting with his wife Sunday. Liu dedicated the award to the "lost souls" of the 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators.

Liu, a slight, 54-year-old literary critic, is in the second year of an 11-year prison term for inciting subversion.

In naming him, the Norwegian-based Nobel committee honored Liu's more than two decades of advocacy of human rights and peaceful democratic change — from demonstrations for democracy at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 to a manifesto for political reform that he co-authored in 2008 and which led to his latest jail term.

Beijing had reacted angrily to Friday's announcement honoring Liu, calling him a criminal and warning Norway's government that relations would suffer, even though the Nobel committee is an independent organization.

On Monday, it abruptly canceled a meeting that had been scheduled for Wednesday between visiting Norwegian Fisheries Minister Lisbeth Berg-Hansen and her Chinese counterpart. Berg-Hansen was in China for a weeklong visit to the World Expo in Shanghai.