Chinese state media blacked out the news and Chinese government
censors blocked Nobel Prize reports, which highlighted Liu's calls
for peaceful political change, from Internet websites. China
declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway and
promptly summoned Oslo's ambassador to Beijing to make a formal
protest.
In Oslo, China's ambassador to Norway met with a state secretary at
Norway's Foreign Ministry, Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Ragnhild Imerslund said. China requested both meetings to express
its discontent with the peace prize decision, Imerslund
said.
She said the Norwegian officials explained that the peace prize
committee is independent of the government and that Norway wants to
maintain good relations with China.
This year's peace prize followed a long tradition of honoring
dissidents around the world and was the first Nobel for China's
dissident community since it resurfaced after the Communists
launched economic but not political reforms three decades ago.
Liu, 54, was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for
subversion. The Nobel committee said he was the first to be honored
while still in prison, although other Nobel winners have been under
house arrest, or imprisoned before the prize.
Other dissidents to win the peace prize include German pacifist
Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in
1975, Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.
The Nobel committee praised Liu's pacifist approach, ignoring
threats by Chinese diplomats even before the announcement that such
a decision would result in strained ties with Norway. Liu has been
an ardent advocate of peaceful, gradual political change.
The Nobel committee cited Liu's participation in the Tiananmen
Square protests in Beijing in 1989 and the Charter 08 document he
recently co-authored, which called for greater freedom in China and
an end to the Communist Party's political dominance.
Chinese authorities would not allow access to Liu on Friday, and it
was not clear if he had been told about the award.
His wife, however, expressed joy at the news. Surrounded by police
at their Beijing apartment, Liu Xia was not allowed out to meet
reporters.
But she issued a statement through Freedom Now, a Washington-based
rights group, saying she was grateful to the Nobel committee.
"It is a true honor for him and one for which I know he would say
he is not worthy," she said, thanking former Czech Republic
President Vaclav Havel and two former Nobel Peace Prize winners —
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and South African
Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu — for nominating her husband.
"I hope that the international community will take this opportunity
to call on the Chinese government to press for my husband's
release," she said.
Liu Xia planned to go Saturday to deliver the news to Liu at his
prison, 300 miles (500 kilometers) from Beijing.
China's Foreign Ministry quickly criticized the Nobel decision,
saying the award should been used instead to promote international
friendship and disarmament.
"Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese
judicial departments for violating Chinese law," spokesman Ma
Zhaoxu said in a statement. Honoring him "runs completely counter
to the principle of the prize and also desecrates the peace
prize."
The ministry said the decision would damage relations between China
and Norway.
Ma's statement was later read on the state television channel
intended for broadcast overseas.
In China, broadcasts of the announcement by CNN were blacked out.
Popular Internet sites removed coverage of the Nobel prizes, placed
prominently in recent days for the science awards. Messages about
"Xiaobo" to Sina Microblog, a Twitter-like service run by Internet
portal Sina.com, were quickly deleted. Attempts to send mobile text
messages with the Chinese characters for Liu Xiaobo failed.
The Nobel committee said China, as a growing economic and political
power, needed to take more responsibility for protecting the rights
of its citizens.
"China has become a big power in economic terms as well as
political terms, and it is normal that big powers should be under
criticism," prize committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said,
calling Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) a symbol for the fight for
human rights in China.
More than a dozen friends and supporters of Liu gathered near the
entrance to Ditan Park in central Beijing, holding up placards
congratulating him. They shouted "Long Live Freedom of Speech, Long
Live Democracy" and wore yellow ribbons on their clothes to
signify, they said, their wish that he be freed.
The small group of demonstrators was later taken away by police.
Liu is almost unknown in China except among political
activists.
Ru Shengtao, 38, a migrant worker with several large bags of cement
strapped on his motorbike, stopped to see what the group was
shouting about. He said he'd never heard of Liu and didn't believe
anyone jailed for a crime in China should be receiving an
international award for peace.
"If the person who won got it because he opposed the government,
then I don't think it's good," he said. "People who defy the
Chinese government should not get this prize and if they do, it's
because people overseas are trying to split China."
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told national
broadcaster NRK he saw no grounds for China to punish Norway as a
country for the award.
"I think that would be negative for China's reputation in the
world, if they chose to do that," Gahr Stoere said.
Several previous peace laureates have been unable to accept the
prize in person because of restrictions imposed by their
governments, including Sakharov and Walesa.
Suu Kyi, who was awarded the 1991 prize and has been detained 15 of
the past 21 years, is due to be released from house arrest Nov. 13,
a week after Myanmar's first elections in two decades. Suu Kyi's
political party won the last elections in 1990 but the ruling junta
never allowed it to take power.
President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, which
this year carries a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (about
$1.5 million).
The Charter 08 document that Liu co-authored was an intentional
echo of Charter 77, the famous call for human rights in
then-Czechoslovakia that led to the 1989 Velvet Revolution that
swept away Communist rule.
"The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer,"
Charter 08 says.
Havel, who helped draft Charter 77, said "Liu Xiaobo is exactly the
kind of a committed citizen who deserves such an award and that is
the reason why I, together with my friends, nominated him."
In an e-mailed statement, Havel praised the Nobel committee "for
not bowing to Chinese threats."
Thousands of Chinese signed Charter 08, and the Communist Party
took the document as a direct challenge.
Police arrested Liu hours before Charter 08 was due to be released
in December 2008. Given a brief trial last Christmas Day,
Liu was convicted of subversion for writing Charter 08 and other
political tracts and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
"Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the
foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in
China," the award citation said.
In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu
had been considered a favorite, with open support from Tutu, the
Dalai Lama and others.
When the Tibet-born Dalai Lama won the peace prize in 1989, both
the Chinese government and some of the public were angry — the
exiled Buddhist leader was endlessly vilified in official
propaganda as a traitor for his calls for more autonomy for
Tibet.
The Dalai Lama on Friday issued his congratulations to Liu.
"I would like to take this opportunity to renew my call to the
government of China to release Liu Xiaobo and other prisoners of
conscience who have been imprisoned for exercising their freedom of
expression" the spiritual leader said.
The son of a soldier, Liu joined China's first wave of university
students in the mid-1970s after the chaotic decade of the Cultural
Revolution.
Liu's writing first took a political turn in 1988, when he became a
visiting scholar in Oslo — his first time outside China.
Liu cut short a visiting scholar stint at Columbia University
months later to join the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in
1989. He and three other older activists famously persuaded
students to peacefully leave the square hours before the deadly
June 4 crackdown.
Liu went to prison after the crackdown and was released in early
1991 because he had repented and "performed major meritorious
services," state media said at the time, without elaborating.
Still, five years later Liu was sent to a re-education camp for
three years for co-writing an open letter that demanded the
impeachment of then-President Jiang Zemin.
The 2010 Nobel announcements started Monday with the medicine award
going to British professor Robert Edwards for fertility research
that led to the first test tube baby.
Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the
physics prize for groundbreaking experiments with graphene, the
strongest and thinnest material known to mankind.
Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki and American
Richard Heck shared the chemistry award for designing techniques to
bind together carbon atoms.
The literature prize went to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa.
The last of the 2010 awards — the economics prize — will be
announced Monday.
Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite,
established the awards in his 1895 will. He left only vague
instructions, dedicating the peace prize to people who have worked
for "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of
standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace
congresses."
___
Ritter reported from Oslo, Norway. Associated Press writers Bjoern
H. Amland in Oslo and Cara Anna and Alexa Olesen in Beijing
contributed to this report.
___
October 08, 2010 11:31 AM EDT
