Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Saturday, 09 October 2010 02:18 Thea Forbes

Jailed Chinese dissident Dr. Liu Xiaobo has been named winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian committee announced yesterday.

Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland from Norway said Liu, 55, was “the foremost symbol of the wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China”.

While Liu’s wife and some Western nations have called for his immediate release, the Chinese foreign ministry quickly denounced the award as an “obscenity” and said that it could harm diplomatic relations between China and Norway. “Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial authorities for violating Chinese law,” the ministry said.

Liu has been jailed four times in China, first for his role in the Tiananmen Square student reform movement. He also served three years in a labour camp in the 90s.

His latest sentence of 11 years jail and two years’ deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power” began on Christmas Day last year for his role in organising Charter 08, a pro-democracy petition that called for multiparty democracy and respect for human rights in China.

“Liu has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China’s own constitution and fundamental human rights,” the Nobel Committee said.

In presenting the citation, Jagland said: “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

He also said: “China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights.”

Jagland said that although China’s own constitution allows the people of China freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and demonstration, but that in practice these rights “have proved to be distinctly curtailed”.

Human rights group Amnesty International described Liu as a “worthy winner”, the BBC reported.

The other shortlisted nominees for this year’s Nobel prize for peace included
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission chairwoman Dr. Sima Samar and the Norway-based news agency Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB).

The highest total ever - 199 individuals and 38 organisations - were nominated for this year’s prize.

Liu was born on December 28, 1955 in Chanchun, Jilin province, and graduated from Jilin University in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in literature. He received an M.A. from the same university in 1984 and a Ph.D. from Beijing University, also in literature in 1988.

He joined the Charter 08 movement by signing it along with other 303 rights activists and academics. The Chinese government arrested him in December 2008.

DVB administrator Aye Chan Naing said that he was proud of DVB reaching the final stage of selection and had hoped for a win until the last minute.

“I feel proud and glad for our reporters, especially those imprisoned, for being nominated for this prestigious prize … [which has come only] because of the great efforts of these reporters,” he said.

DVB brought to the world in-depth news coverage of the protests led by Burmese Buddhist monks in September 2007. It was also featured in the Oscar-nominated Burma VJ, a documentary film following its undercover reporters secretly filming the 2007 protests and the subsequent brutal and violent crackdown by the ruling Burmese military junta.

Liu becomes the second Nobel Peace laureate in detention, joining Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest. She was awarded the prize in 1991.

Swede Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the Nobel prizes in a will that took several years to complete. The final version in 1895, laid down “that the bulk of his immense fortune should be reserved for a fund for the financing of annual honorary awards to be made in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature and peace”, the Nobel website said.

Additional reporting by Salai Han Thar San