China firmly against Liu Xiaobo Nobel prize
The Nobel Peace Prize committee is preparing to host its award ceremony, amid continuing anger from the Chinese government at this year’s winner.
Dissident Liu Xiaobo – jailed in north-east China for political offences – will not be in Oslo to get his prize.
China has waged a wide-ranging campaign to discredit the award in recent weeks.
Ahead of the ceremony, the UN said it had information that China had detained at least 20 activists and was making efforts to block Western media.
A further 120 cases of house arrest, travel restriction, forced relocation and other acts of intimidation have been reported.
Intense politics
Of about 50 countries invited to the Nobel ceremony, almost a third are staying away, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, many as a result of Chinese pressure.
Beijing has sought to prevent anyone travelling from China to Oslo, in Norway, to collect the prize on Mr Liu’s behalf.
And a Chinese group of academics launched their own award, the Confucius Peace Prize, in the Chinese capital on Thursday.
Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland has said the award should not be seen as a statement against China.
The BBC’s world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge says that the intense politics surrounding this year’s Nobel peace laureate will overshadow the ceremony itself.
To the Nobel Committee, Liu Xiaobo symbolises a message it was keen to send to China – that its growing economic strength and power do not exempt it from universal standards of human rights.
On the other hand, China says the committee has chosen a criminal convicted under Chinese law to serve the interests of certain Western countries, our correspondent says.
Liu Xiaobo first came to prominence when he took part in the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
He was sent to prison for nearly two years for his role, and has been a critic of the Chinese government ever since.
He was given an 11-year prison sentence in December 2009 for inciting the subversion of state power, a charge which came after he co-authored a document known as Charter 08.
The document calls openly for political reforms in China, such as a separation of powers and legislative democracy.
This year marks the first time since 1936 that the Nobel Peace Prize, now worth $1.5m, will not be handed out.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Thursday again called for Mr Liu to be released “as soon as possible”.
The Chinese government has been furious about the award ever since it was announced in October that Liu Xiaobo had won it.
Beijing says that Mr Liu – a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests – is a criminal, and insists that giving him a prize is an insult to China’s judicial system.
As well as putting Liu Xia, the Nobel laureate’s wife, under house arrest, other activists and dissidents have faced pressure from the authorities.
Some have been prevented from leaving the country, while others have been forced to leave their homes for the next few days, according to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
One of those to disappear, it said, was Zhang Zuhua, the man who co-wrote Charter 08.
Meanwhile, the BBC website appears to have been blocked in China.
Users in several parts of the country have reported that they are unable to access the BBC’s internet site, while the BBC has noticed a steep drop in traffic from China.
It is the first time the BBC’s English-language website has been blocked since the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Access to other international news sites such as CNN also appears to be restricted.
Source: BBC