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| People sign a petition supporting jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong on December 10, 2010. China clamped down on dissidents, the Internet and the media on December 10 as the Nobel committee readied to honour peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, with activists missing and strong security at his wife's flat. |
by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
(December 11, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Oslo based Nobel Prize Committee has rightly given their most prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese writer and peace activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010. The Nobel Laureate Liu is serving 11-year imprisonment term in China for his active role in defense of human rights, freedom of expression and democracy. Beijing has put wife of Liu Xiaobo into house arrest to stop her from attending the ceremony. After many decades, this year again, the Nobel Prize was placed on an empty chair marked for the laureate.
Liu took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989 and was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China.
This manifesto was published on December 10, 2008 — the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The following year, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power."
He consistently maintained that the sentence violates both international human rights charters and China’s own constitution.
In the award ceremony speech, chairman of the committee, Thorbjørn Jagland said, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace. Such rights are a prerequisite for the "fraternity between nations" of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.”
He said, “There was a great deal of trouble in 1935, when the Committee gave the award to Carl von Ossietzky. Hitler was furious, and prohibited all Germans from accepting any Nobel Prize. King Haakon did not attend the ceremony. Ossietzky did not come to Oslo, and died a little over a year later.
“There was considerable outrage in Moscow when Andrei Sakharov received his Prize in 1975. He, too, was prevented from receiving the award in person. He sent his wife. The same thing happened to Lech Walesa in 1983. The Burmese authorities were furious when Aung San Suu Kyi received the Peace Prize in 1991. Once again, the Laureate could not come to Oslo.
“In 2003, Shirin Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize. She came. Much could be said of the reaction of the Iranian authorities, but the Iranian Ambassador did in fact attend the ceremony.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has given four Prizes to South Africa. All the Laureates came to Oslo, but the awards to Albert Lutuli in 1960 and to Desmond Tutu in 1984 provoked great outrage in the apartheid regime in South Africa, before the applause broke out thanks to the awards to Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Kerk in 1993.”
Commenting to current day’s China, the Nobel Committee chairman said, “China’s new status entails increased responsibility. China must be prepared for criticism and regard it as positive – as an opportunity for improvement. This must be the case wherever there is great power. We have all formed opinions on the role of the USA through the years. Friends and allies criticised the country both for the Vietnam War and for the lack of civil rights for the coloured people. Many Americans were opposed to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King in 1964. Looking back, we can see that the USA grew stronger when the African-American people obtained their rights.
Many will ask whether China’s weakness – for all the strength the country is currently showing – is not manifested in the need to imprison a man for eleven years merely for expressing his opinions on how his country should be governed.”
Several countries, including China refrained from attending the prize giving ceremony in Oslo. Those countries are Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said, more than 100 countries and organizations have expressed support for Beijing opposing the Nobel Peace prize.
Li Datong, a Beijing-based writer who recently signed a petition calling for Liu's release, said it was "absolute rubbish" to say the international community opposed the award. "The foreign ministry has no shame. It's a lie, pure and simple, told without the slightest hint of embarrassment," he said.
On receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the case of Liu Xiaobo came into the attention of global community and of course especially the pro-democracy forces. The imprisonment of Liu is illegal and it goes even against the Constitutional Provisions of China itself. But, of course, the Communist dictators in Beijing will continue to remain deaf on assessing the entire situation. Wish they could realize that, any repressive force in the world, finally failed to continue having grip over any nation in the world. Regime in Beijing will surely be seeing no exception – either sooner or later.
If China is really willing to improve its image globally as a nation showing minimum respect of human rights, it should release Liu Xiaobo without any delay. On the other hand, those countries, refraining from attending the prize ceremony should be well identified as opponents of democracy and human rights. Pakistan is one of them, where a bunch of corrupt people are now in power. Saudi Arabia and Iran are two other nations, which are the authoritarian rules of dynastic monarchists and fanatic Islamists respectively.
Members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee rightly deserves appreciation and commendation from the international community for selecting Liu Xiaobo as 2010s Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
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