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Nobel Peace Prize in China Raises New Hopes of Freedoms for Rights Activists
October 11, 2010

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Beijing. Chinese rights campaigners are expressing hope that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to jailed writer Liu Xiaobo will spotlight the struggles of other dissidents suffering from Beijing’s heavy hand.

Liu, 54, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for subversion, on Friday became the first Chinese citizen to receive the coveted award, sparking an angry reaction from China’s communist government.

But Liu is not the only jailed or harassed dissident mentioned as a Nobel contender in recent years, and the award is a long overdue symbol of world support for all rights defenders in the country, activists said.

“We can only hope that the Peace Prize will add momentum to the efforts for their freedom,” said Renee Xia, international director for the activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

“We think Liu’s Nobel is the biggest breakthrough in civil society in more than 20 years, and especially since 1989,” prominent rights lawyer Li Fangping said, referring to the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing that year.

Liu was a central figure in the weeks-long demonstrations, which the army violently crushed in June 1989.

Meanwhile, Liu’s wife said on Monday she was under house arrest in Beijing and pleaded for help in broadcasting her plight on Liu’s Twitter account.

She said she had just returned from visiting a prison in northeastern China, where she informed Liu of his award.

Authorities detained dozens of Liu’s supporters in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities on Friday as they celebrated his award.

Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Monday criticized China’s irate response to the Peace Prize award.

Speaking at Tokyo’s Narita airport, the Dalai Lama, who won the same prize in 1989, said the Chinese government does “not appreciate different opinions at all.”

He also said building an open, transparent society was “the only way to save all people of China” but that some “hard-liners” inside the leadership were stuck in an “old way of thinking.”

Also on Monday, China cancelled a meeting with a Norwegian minister because of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award Liu the prize.

Fisheries Minister Lisbeth Berg-Hansen and a delegation were already in Shanghai preparing for a long-scheduled meeting on Wednesday to discuss trade in seafood when China cancelled it, her ministry said.
 

AFP, AP, Reuters