During the Tibetan unrest of 2008, Woeser and her husband were put under house arrest after they spoke to reporters. In December 2008, Woeser and her husband were among the first of the original 303 people to sign Charter 08, Now, thousands more have signed it. Liu Xiaobo, the author of Charter 08, went to prison for 11 years. He received the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. In July 2009, Woeser and her husband, along with more than 100 other people, signed a petition for the Chinese govenrmnent to free ethnic-Uyghur professor of economics Ilham Tohti. When Woeser won the Prince Claus Awards in 2011, the government did not permit her to receive the prize in the Dutch embassy.