Support for Dissident Nomination
2010-10-04
A former official says China should embrace the selection of an imprisoned activist.
Undated photo of Liu Xiaobo.
HONG KONG—A former top Communist Party official has hit out at Beijing for opposing the nomination of jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, saying Liu has the support of many Chinese.
The 54-year old Liu, once a leading Beijing intellectual and acerbic literary critic, is among favorites to win the Nobel Peace Prize to be announced on Oct. 8, commentators said.
The award last year went to U.S. President Barack Obama.
"There are a lot of people [in China], myself included, who think that Liu Xiaobo should have no qualms at all about accepting the Nobel Peace Prize," wrote Bao Tong, former aide to disgraced late Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang.
"The Chinese government should learn a lesson from the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for this year's Nobel Peace Prize," Bao wrote from his Beijing home, where he has been held under house arrest since serving a seven-year jail term for subversion in the wake of the 1989 pro-democracy movement.
"They should learn to respect their own laws and their own people, and to share responsibility for world peace and for the international community," he wrote in a recent essay.
Charter author
Liu was jailed last December on subversion charges after he was identified as the key author of Charter 08, a controversial document calling for sweeping political change in China.
A pro-democracy manifesto that called on the Communist Party to enact political reforms and uphold the constitutional rights of Chinese citizens, Charter 08 was signed by 303 mainland intellectuals and sent shockwaves through the highest echelons of China's leadership.
Liu was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to 11 years in prison on Dec. 25, 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power."
China's vice foreign minister Fu Ying has warned the director of the Norway-based Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad, against awarding the prize to Liu, Lundestad has said.
And foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Liu had been found guilty of breaking Chinese law, and would therefore be an unsuitable candidate.
'High' chance of winning
Bao said Liu's "criminality" was highly suspect, owing to the nature of China's political system, which he once sought to reform.
"Liu Xiaobo wasn't sentenced according to law, because he was subject to a judicial system with Chinese characteristics," Bao wrote. "This was trial by Party: the Party said he was guilty, and so he was guilty."
He said that any attempt to put political pressure on the Nobel prize committee, which awarded the 1989 Peace Prize to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was unlikely to succeed.
U.S.-based Chinese scholar Hu Ping, editor-in-chief of Beijing Spring magazine, said he thought the likelihood of Liu's winning the award this year was "very high."
"Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08 have had a rather big impact," Hu said.
Democracy activist
Meanwhile, Shandong-based retired university professor Sun Wenguang, a long-time friend and supporter of Liu's, said the jailed dissident had made a huge contribution to the cause of democratization in China.
"He has stuck with it through continual police harassment, and confiscation of his belongings and searches of his home," Sun said.
Another key point Liu had espoused was that the government's official verdict on the 1989 student-led demonstrations and the subsequent military crackdown should be overturned, and the victims rehabilitated, Sun said.
More than 100 Chinese scholars, lawyers and reform campaigners have lobbied the Nobel committee on behalf of Liu.
Other contenders for this year's Nobel prize include Zimbabwe's prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates have included Burma's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, South African former president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu.
Laureates are selected by secret ballot by the Nobel committee, from a shortlist of nominees garnered from a list of approved institutions and international experts.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Yang Jiadai. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
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