Obama wins second peace prize - Page 2

Originally Posted by FormerLurker

Is this post an example of shamelessly lying, or just of incredible stupidity?

The one year anniversary of Obama's prize comes as fighting is escalating in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq continues to smolder and Obama struggles to keep fledgling Middle East peace talks from collapsing. Drones are firing missiles in unprecedened numbers and confrontations with Iran and North Korea are hotter than ever.

In addition, wars rage in Somalia, Africa, Asia and South America, fueled by religion, tribal hatreds, poverty and piracy.

Originally Posted by FloorJack

On your part maybe.

Originally Posted by FormerLurker

Is this post an example of shamelessly lying, or just of incredible stupidity?

Originally Posted by FloorJack

Oh yes. We must alway be serious. We can't have fun in here! This is the war room!

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner's wife Liu Xia was being forced to leave her home in Beijing by plainclothes police officers Friday, she told Reuters during a phone interview shortly after the prize was awarded.

The officers said they wanted to take Liu to the prison in Jinzhou in the northeastern province of Liaoning, where her husband Liu Xiaobo is being held in an apparent effort to prevent foreign reporters from speaking to her, she said.

"They are forcing me to leave Beijing," said Liu as her brothers packed her bags with plainclothes police waiting for her outside.

"They want me to go to Liaoning to see Xiaobo. They want to distance me from the media," she added.

BEIJING China's dwindling band of pro-democracy dissidents believe awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to one of their own could bring change to the world's most populous country, his wife told Reuters.

Liu Xiaobo, jailed in 2009 for 11 years for subversion, won the prize for his decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, putting China's rights record in the spotlight at a time when the world's most populous nation is starting to play a bigger role on the global stage.
"His friends repeatedly told me that they thirsted for Liu Xiaobo to win the Prize more than he himself did because they think it would be an opportunity to change China," she said by telephone.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Liu for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer 26*mins*ago
BEIJING China on Monday blocked European diplomats from meeting with the wife of the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner, cut off her phone communication and canceled meetings with Norwegian officials acting on its fury over the award.

As China retaliated, U.N. human rights experts called on Beijing to free imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo, who was permitted a brief, tearful meeting with his wife Sunday. Liu dedicated the award to the "lost souls" of the 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators.

Also Monday, four U.N. human rights experts released a statement calling for China to immediately release Liu.

The independent U.N.-appointed investigators say Liu is "a courageous human rights defender who has continuously and peacefully advocated for greater respect for human rights" in China.
Frank La Rue, El Hadji Malick Sow, Margaret Sekaggya and Gabriela Knaul who examine issues ranging from breaches of the right to free speech to arbitrary detention called on China to release Liu and "all persons detained for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression."

European diplomats, meanwhile, were prevented from visiting Liu's wife, who has been living under house arrest since Friday. Liu Xia has been told that if she wants to leave her home she must be escorted in a police car, the New York-based group Human Rights in China said.

Simon Sharpe, the first secretary of political affairs of the EU delegation in China, said he wanted to see Liu Xia at her home in Beijing to personally deliver a letter of congratulations on the peace award from the president of the European Commission.

Sharpe was accompanied by diplomats from about 10 embassies, including Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy and Australia.

But three uniformed guards at the main gate of Liu's apartment complex prevented the group from entering, saying someone from inside the building had to come out and fetch them.
"We were told that we could only go in if we called somebody from the inside and if they came out to meet us. But of course, we can't call Liu Xia, because it's impossible to get through to her phone," Sharpe told reporters at the entrance to the compound.

Sharpe read out a message from Jose Manuel Barroso that said the decision to award Liu the peace prize was "a strong message of support to all those around the world who sometimes with great personal sacrifice are struggling for freedom and human rights."

The Dalai Lama has criticised China's opposition to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said the Chinese government did "not appreciate different opinions".

Building an open society was "the only way to save all people of China", he told Japanese media.

Meanwhile, Mr Liu's wife has apparently been placed under house arrest after he dedicated the award to the "martyrs" of Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Mr Liu was a key figure in the protests. He was also involved in drafting Charter 08 two years ago - a document which called for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.
In 2009 he was jailed for 11 years for "inciting subversion".

Originally Posted by FloorJack

It's good that someone is shining a spotlight on China. Too bad they wasted the last few peace prizes.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expressed solidarity with China's government Sunday over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed Chinese dissident.

He suggested the prize should not have gone to Liu Xiaobo, who has drawn praise from Western governments as an advocate of gradual political change without any violent confrontation with Chinese leaders.

"This (Liu) is like Obama, the other peace prize," Chavez said.

The Venezuelan leader criticized last year's award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, saying the U.S. president didn't deserve the honor because his administration continues to engage in wars.

Speaking in his weekly radio and television program, Chavez scoffed at his Venezuelan political opponents who praised the giving of the peace prize to Liu.

Chavez said the opposition's support for the prize showed that "they are lackeys" of the West. "They are worse than the Yankees."

"Our greetings and solidarity go to the government of the People's Republic of China," Chavez said, adding: "Viva China! And its sovereignty, its independence and its greatness."

The Chinese government reacted angrily to the announcement of the peace prize for Liu. It said the Norwegian Nobel Committee violated its own principles by honoring a "criminal."

Chavez's government has intensified its diplomatic and trade relations with China as part of Chavez's effort to diversify sales of the country's oil. The United States, which Chavez accuses of trying to dominate the region, remains the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil.

Venezuela is one of the largest world oil exporters and China one of the largest consumers. The Venezuelan government plans to increase its oil sales to China to 1 million barrels a day by 2012 and build three refineries in China.

HAVANA Cuban state-controlled media says it is disappointed with the Nobel prizes awarded to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo and Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, an outspoken critic of dictatorships across Latin America.
The website Cubadebate, where Fidel Castro posts his opinion columns, carried an article over the weekend saying, "Let's hope to God this is just one of those ideological strikes that this once-prestigious honor has delivered over its long history, and not a new rule."
The opinion was signed by M. H. Lagarde, a longtime commentator for Cuban government media.
Liu, a 54-year-old literary critic who is in the second year of an 11-year prison term for inciting subversion, was picked for the Noble Peace Prize last week.
China has become a major trading partner and ideological partner of Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc deprived Cuba of its main foreign supporters. China and Cuba are both governed by Communist Parties that tolerate little organized opposition.
Lagarde compared Liu to the sort of dissidents here that Cuba's government considers agents of Washington. "The curriculum vitae of Liu Xiaobo is, as a matter of fact, not the least bit different from the type of 'dissident' the United States has for decades employed."
Another ally of Cuba and China, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, expressed solidarity with China on Sunday and criticized his country's opposition media for alleging that Chinese failure to broadcast news of Liu's award showed "the repressive character" of the government there.
"They are lackeys. They are worse than the Yankees," he said of critics.
Vargas Llosa once sympathized with Castro but became a critic of Cuban politics in the early 1970s. The 74-year-old often criticizes what he views as threats to democracy and freedoms in Latin America.
As he basked in praise for winning the literature prize last week, Vargas Llosa singled out Venezuela and Cuba, saying they represent a step backward for a hemisphere emerging from an era of strongman leaders.
Lagarde said that Vargas Llosa's agreement "with the most-reactionary of the international right is as unquestionable as his silences on the unjust war brought by the United States against Iraq and tortures in the concentration camp of Guantanamo," a reference to the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba where the U.S. houses terror suspects.
He "should have received the award many years ago, when ... he was more of a writer than a politician," Lagarde wrote.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

After Oslo made its announcement, Beijing labeled the award an obscenity. By Beijings standards it certainly is. Charter 08, a document that Liu helped writeand that was published in English for the first time in the January 15, 2009, issue of The New York Reviewwas soon signed by ten thousand Chinese. It demanded that



Words can be fatal in China. Zhang Zhixin, a young Chinese woman, was executed in 1975 for opposing the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao, opposing Mao Zedong thought, opposing the revolutionary proletarian line and piling offense upon offense. To ensure that Ms. Zhang could not cry out at her execution, her vocal cords were cut.

In May 1989, in Tiananmen Square, I saw the then-thirty-three-year-old Mr. Liu, a university teacher, exhorting students to demand democracy above all, in addition to their calls for free speech and an end to corruption. On the night of June 4, Mr. Liu helped broker a deal with the army that permitted the last protesters in the square to escape the slaughter that had already taken hundreds of lives. He was immediately imprisoned for twenty months as a black hand. After his release Mr. Liu said, I hope to be a sincere Chinese intellectual and writer. This can put me back into prisonwhich is what happens to people like me in China.

Speaking to the BBC by telephone, Liu Xia said she was unable to leave her home.

"Liu Xia's rights should be respected, and she should be allowed to move freely without harassment," a spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing said.

The award honouring Mr Liu has drawn a furious reaction from China.

Beijing has called it an "obscenity" that went against the principles of the Nobel prize.

Liu Xiaobo was a key figure in the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

Relatives of victims of the 1989 military crackdown are now calling on the Chinese government to release him.

In an open letter, a group known as the Tiananmen Mothers praised Mr Liu for his non-violent struggle in the pursuit of democracy in China.

One of the signatories, Zhang Xianling, told AFP news agency: "He has fought with and supported the Tiananmen Mothers for over 20 years, he has always stood with us and today we are standing by him."

The wife and lawyers of Mr Liu are also considering a possible bid for a retrial over his 11-year sentence for "inciting subversion", one his lawyers was quoted as saying.

Mrs Liu said she hoped her husband would "be released as innocent".

She said diplomats from the Norwegian embassy in Beijing were prevented from visiting her on Monday.

There are also reports that more political activists in Beijing have had their movements restricted, including Zhou Duo, who was with Mr Liu during the Tiananmen Square protests.

Originally Posted by iPoster

"The Internet" as a Nobel candidate? Who would accept the prize, Al Gore?

Originally Posted by sheldon25

I think better than Al Gore to this guys:

"Vint Cerf
Bob Kahn"

The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)

Alfred Nobel was interested in social issues. He developed a special engagement in the peace movement. An important factor in Nobels interest in peace was his acquaintance with Bertha von Suttner. Perhaps his interest in peace was also due to the use of his inventions in warfare and assassination attempts? Peace was the fifth and final prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.

Nomination and Selection of Peace Prize Laureates


Process of Nomination and Selection


Who is eligible for the Prize

Qualified Nominators

The right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize shall, by statute, be enjoyed by:

1.\tMembers of national assemblies and governments of states;
2.\tMembers of international courts;
3.\tUniversity rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4.\tPersons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5.\tBoard members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6.\tActive and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1) and
7.\tFormer advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
The Nobel Peace Prize may also be awarded to institutions and associations.

The Nobel Prize in Physics


(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)

Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will. At that time, in the end of the nineteenth century, many people viewed physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.

BEIJING A group of eminent Chinese Communist Party elders has issued a bold call to end the country's wide-ranging restrictions on free speech, just days after the government reacted angrily to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.
In an open letter posted online, the retired officials state that although China's 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the right is constrained by a host of laws and regulations that should be scrapped.
"This kind of false democracy of affirming in principle and denying in actuality is a scandal in the history of democracy," said the letter, which was dated Monday and widely distributed by e-mail.
Wang Yongcheng, a retired professor at Shanghai's Jiaotong University who signed the letter, said it had been inspired by the recent arrest of a journalist who wrote about corruption in the resettlement of farmers for a dam project.
"We want to spur action toward governing the country according to law," Wang said in a telephone interview.
"If the constitution is violated, the government will lack legitimacy. The people must assert and exercise their legitimate rights," he said.
Coming on top of Liu's Nobel Prize, the letter further spotlights China's tight restrictions on freedom of speech and other civil rights, although Wang said the two events were not directly related. Work on the letter began several days before the prize was awarded, and drafters decided against including a reference to Liu out of concern the government would block its circulation.
Liu, a 54-year-old literary critic, is now in the second year of an 11-year prison term after being convicted of inciting subversion over his role in writing an influential 2008 manifesto for political reform.
China's government has denounced Liu's prize as an attempt to interfere in its political and legal systems and said it would harm relations with Norway, where an independent committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize each year.
The letter called on the National People's Congress, China's legislature, to scrap restrictions on publications and implement a system of post-facto review as many other nations did long ago.
"Our current system of censoring news and publications is 315 years behind Britain and 129 years behind France," the letter said.
Censorship has become so reflexive and restrictive that even passages urging political reform were expunged from official media reports on speeches by Premier Wen Jiabao, the letter said. Wen has drawn attention in recent weeks with a series of unusually direct calls for the communist system to evolve.
"Not even the nation's premier has freedom of publication," the letter said.
China implements overlapping and usually unwritten rules and regulations on what can or cannot be published, but the final call is made by the Communist Party's shadowy Central Propaganda Department. Members of the department regularly notify editors about what topics are taboo, usually by telephone to avoid leaving a paper trail, with the list changing constantly depending on events.
The letter described the department as an "invisible black hand" and questioned what right it had to override both the government and the premier.
The 23 signatories to the letter include Li Rui, the former secretary to revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and other retired high officials in state media and the propaganda apparatus who were once themselves responsible for enforcing strict censorship.
The government insists it guarantees freedoms and points to vast improvements in incomes and quality of life among its citizens as evidence that the one-party authoritarian system is best suited to the country's realities.
Calls to the National People's Congress' news office rang unanswered Wednesday.
Li, who is in his 90s, is hospitalized and could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could most other signatories to the most recent letter.
Members of the group have signed other letters in the past, including one addressed to the Beijing leadership in early 2009 that voiced support for the government's $586 billion economic stimulus package but warned that without transparency it could be frittered away by corrupt officials.

I heartily applaud the Nobel Committee for awarding its Peace Prize to the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo for his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. In doing so, the committee has challenged the West to re-examine a dangerous notion that has become prevalent since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre: that economic development will inevitably lead to democracy in China.

Increasingly, throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, this argument gained sway. Some no doubt believed it; others perhaps found it convenient for their business interests. Many trusted the top Chinese policymakers who sought to persuade the outside world that if they continued pouring in their investments without an embarrassing linkage to human rights principles, all would get better at Chinas own pace.

More than 20 years have passed since Tiananmen. China has officially become the worlds second-largest economy. Yet the hardly radical Liu Xiaobo and thousands of others rot in jail for merely demanding basic rights enshrined by the UN and taken for granted by all Western investors in their own countries. Apparently, human rights have not inevitably improved despite a soaring economy.

Democracy will not automatically emerge

Liu Xiaobos own experience over the last 20 years ought to be enough evidence on its own to finally demolish any idea that democracy will automatically emerge as a result of growing prosperity.

I knew Mr. Liu in the 1980s, when he was an outspoken young man. He took part in 1989 in the peaceful protests at Tiananmen Square and was sentenced to two years in prison for his efforts. From then until 1999, he was in and out of labor camps, prisons, detention centers, and house arrest. In 2008, he initiated the Charter 08 petition calling for China to comply with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consequently, he was again arrested, this time sentenced to a particularly harsh 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power even though China is a signatory of the UN Declaration.

According to human rights organizations that monitor the situation in China, there are about 1,400 political, religious, and conscience prisoners spread around in prisons or labor camps across China. Their crimes have included membership in underground political or religious groups, independent trade unions and non-governmental organizations, or they have been arrested for participating in strikes or demonstrations and have publicly expressed dissenting political opinions.

A wake-up call

This undeniable reality ought to be a wake-up call to anyone who naively believes the autocratic rulers of China will alter their disregard of human rights just because the country is richer. Regardless of how widely Chinas leaders have opened its market to the outside world, they have not retreated even half a step from their repressive political creed.

On the contrary, Chinas dictators have become even more contemptuous of the value of universal human rights. Still under pressure in the decade after Tiananmen, the Communist government released 100 political prisoners in order to improve its image. Since 2000, as the Chinese economy grew stronger and stronger and the pressure from the international community became less and less, they have returned again to hard-line repression.

The international community should be especially concerned over Chinas breach of international agreements to which it is a signatory. Besides the UN Declaration on Human Rights, China also signed the UN Convention Against Torture in 1988. Yet, torture, maltreatment, and psychiatric manipulation are extensively used in detention and prison camps in China. This includes beatings, the use of leg shackles and/or handcuffs for prolonged periods, extended solitary confinement, severely inadequate food, extreme exposure to cold and heat, and denial of medical treatment.

As the power of the regime grows with prosperity, the Communist Party feels confident in its immunity as it violates the strictures of its own constitution. Article 35 of Chinas constitution, for example, says that citizens of the Peoples Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. Yet, can anyone doubt governments crackdown on these rights, not to speak of regularly blocking the Internet, including denying access in a whole swath of China after the incidents between Han and Uighurs in western China? Censors can easily locate e-mails and their authors using sensitive words like Liu Xiaobo and filter them out.

The link between human rights and world peace

As the unfortunate history of Japan during the first half of the 20th century illustrates, a power that marries economic strength and human rights violations is a threat to peace.

Thankfully, the courageous Nobel Committee has exposed this link once again in the case of a prospering China. The committee is absolutely right to make a connection between respect for human rights and world peace. As Alfred Nobel so well understood, human rights are the prerequisite for the fraternity between nations.

BEIJING China has long coveted a Nobel Prize for one of its citizens, but the peace prize awarded last week to Liu Xiaobo, who is serving 11 years in prison for helping write a manifesto for democratic change, was the last one the government wanted to win.[FT Comment--be careful what you wish for.]

In private conversations, people here are speculating about the governments options. Keeping Mr. Liu, now arguably the worlds most famous political prisoner, in jail would serve as a powerful magnet for criticism of Chinas human rights record. Releasing him would put back in circulation a man whose calls for freedom the government fears so much it has jailed him three times.

News of the award has spread slowly, impeded by Internet and media censorship. Chinas response, delivered by the Foreign Ministry, was to call it an obscenity. Dissemination of this official version of events was not blocked, but independent comment and expressions of congratulation were quickly erased from Web sites.

As the news crept out, Chinese people were deeply divided.

Free speech and civil society advocates rejoiced. Some organized private dinners where they raised glasses to toast Mr. Liu, a key figure in the 1989 democracy movement that was violently suppressed by the military on the night of June 3-4 that year.

Others reacted angrily, conditioned by decades of nationalist discourse that permeates education and society. They saw a plot by the West to humiliate China.

I dont think this prize is appropriate, and I dont agree with it. This is an insult to the Chinese government, a sign of disrespect, contempt, said a 65-year-old university professor, who requested anonymity because the issue is so contentious.

Each country has its own laws, its own rules and its own profit, no matter what, she added. For a person who is a criminal under Chinese law to win the Nobel Peace Prize, well, thats ironic.

Still others, somewhere on the spectrum between the two extremes, were pleased but struggled with conflicting emotions.


Regardless of where they stand, many people in China are transfixed by what they say is a major quandary facing the government: what to do with Mr. Liu, who still has a decade left in prison?

They cant keep him in jail! Impossible! said a businessman who took part in the 1989 democracy movement as a 20-year-old. He also requested anonymity.

Leaving Mr. Liu in jail would be a public relations disaster dogging China through the next decade of its self-proclaimed peaceful rise, he said.

On the other hand, he continued, They cant set him free!

The Chinese government has often released high-profile dissidents when their presence proved too , on condition that they leave the country. It may hope to do that again.

But it is widely believed that Mr. Liu would refuse to leave if he were freed. Offered the chance immediately after the 1989 crackdown, he refused, cycling home after two days in hiding, only to be knocked off his bicycle and arrested by security officials tailing him in a van. A year and a half in jail followed.

So what are they going to do? the businessman asked, predicting that it could take the leadership months to come up with a solution.

Why?

They cant kill him. They cant let him live. They cant jail him, hes already in jail. They cant shut him up. Theyll have to force him out.

Speculation is growing that the government might try to exert pressure on Mr. Lius wife, Liu Xia, and her family, in order to get Mr. Liu to agree to leave. Ms. Liu, a poet and photographer, is already under de facto house arrest, her telephone out of order, though she can e-mail at least sporadically and has used Twitter to communicate with the outside world.

Another businessman joked that China might consider disposing of Mr. Liu by sending him to North Korea, its stout ally.

What did he think the prize meant for China?

His response reflected a cynicism not uncommon here.

Ultimately, it may not mean anything, he said, because there are so many other things that dont mean anything today either, things that arent even in history books, like 6/4 itself, using the shorthand for the massacre of June 4, 1989.

The growing rumble of opinions will have reached the ears of the countrys Communist leaders, gathering Friday for the annual Central Committee plenum, heightening an already sensitive debate over political reform many believe is on the agenda.

They will undoubtedly know of another development this week, upping the pressure a highly critical letter published Monday calling for China to implement freedom of speech and the press. It was written before the announcement of the Nobel Prize by 23 party elders and mostly retired government and media officials, including Li Rui, 93, once secretary to Mao Zedong, and Hu Jiwei, 94, a former editor of Peoples Daily, the party newspaper.

Meanwhile, in China, the news of Mr. Lius award continues to spread.

Congratulatory messages identified as being from China poured in to Nobelprize.org, the official Web site of the Nobel Prize.

Congratulations from Shanghai Jiaotong University! read a typical one. People in Guangzhou send congratulations! read another.

As to the governments dilemma, one anonymous well-wisher on the site had the following advice: The Nobel is a heavy prize, and should be shrugged off by releasing Mr. Liu.

(TibetanReview.net, Oct13, 2010) China on Oct 11 prevented European diplomats from meeting Liu Xia, wife of the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo while four UN human rights officials released a statement calling for the release of the jailed activist, reported AP Oct 11.

Liu Xia remains under house arrest at her home in Beijing, following a brief, tearful meeting with her husband in a jail 300 km from the Chinese capital. All her communication links were cut off and she could leave home only with a police escort car.

The report cited Simon Sharpe, the first secretary of political affairs of the EU delegation in China, as saying he wanted to see Liu Xia to personally deliver a letter of congratulations on the peace award from the president of the European Commission. He was He was accompanied by diplomats from about 10 embassies, including Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy and Australia.

Three uniformed guards at the main gate of Liu's apartment complex told the group that they could enter only if someone from inside the building, after being called, comes out and fetch them. But of course, we can't call Liu Xia, because it's impossible to get through to her phone," Mr Sharpe was quoted as saying.

The report said Sharpe read out a statement from Jose Manuel Barroso that said the decision to award Liu the peace prize was "a strong message of support to all those around the world who sometimes with great personal sacrifice are struggling for freedom and human rights."

The police action being illegal, neither the Beijing public security bureau nor Chinas foreign ministry were said to be commenting on the restrictions on Liu Xias movement. But this sort of detention is a common tactic used by the Chinese government to intimidate and muffle activists and critics.

On the same day, Frank La Rue, El Hadji Malick Sow, Margaret Sekaggya and Gabriela Knaul independent human rights experts at the UN examining issues ranging from breaches of the right to free speech to arbitrary detention called on China to immediately release Liu and "all persons detained for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression." The experts were quoted as saying in their statement that Liu is "a courageous human rights defender who has continuously and peacefully advocated for greater respect for human rights" in China.

Amnesty International also used the occasion to call on China to release all prisoners of conscience. Liu is a
in China, UPI Oct 11 quoted it as saying. It quoted Catherine Baber, Amnesty International's deputy Asia-Pacific director, as saying the award will be more than worthwhile if it puts more international pressure on China to release Liu "along with the numerous other prisoners of conscience languishing in Chinese jails for exercising their right to freedom of expression."

Human Rights Watch, which earlier this year honoured Liu with the 2010 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism for his commitment to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in China, also applauded the 2010 Nobel laureate. "This award will no doubt infuriate the Chinese government by putting its human rights record squarely back into the international debate," Sophie Richardson, the groups Asia advocacy director, was quoted as saying.

BEIJING More than 100 Chinese activists have signed and released an open letter asking that Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo be released from prison.

The letter released late Thursday and posted online also asks China's leaders to respond to the peace prize "with realism and reason."

China has responded angrily to the award, saying the West is using it to undermine China and calling Liu a criminal.

The literary critic and activist is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion after co-authoring a call for political reform in China.

Since the peace prize was awarded a week ago, a group of Chinese Communist Party elders has issued a separate public demand for more freedom of speech in China.

Meanwhile, dozens of activists have reported being detained or harassed by police over the peace prize and warned not to use the prize as momentum to make trouble.

Some of them also received threatening calls from police over the latest open letter even before it was released, said Xu Youyu, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who signed and helped prepare the letter.

The letter asks police to stop "these illegal actions."




The letter also seizes on a series of recent public remarks by Premier Wen Jiabao, who made unusually direct calls for the communist system to evolve. Some of the remarks have been censored inside China.


Xu said more than 120 people have signed the letter. A copy shows that signers include several well-known activists including constitutional scholar Zhang Zuhua, one of the people who worked with Liu to draft Charter 08, the call for further freedoms in China that got Liu sent to prison.

Other signers include activist lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and Li Datong, a veteran state newspaper journalist who was forced from a top editing job for reporting on sensitive subjects.

Norway has been hit with the first wave of diplomatic backlash after awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo.

China called off two high-level meetings in Beijing with Norways fisheries minister this week. In addition, cancellations have been pouring in for four other scheduled Sino-Norwegian meetings.

But the award could actually provide a bigger backlash for China at home because it has generated a game-changing dynamic for reform, according to Sharon Hom, executive director for Human Rights in China, an international nongovernmental organization based in Hong Kong and New York.

Why China sees Norway as responsible for Nobel

China is upset that the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the award to Mr. Liu, who was sentenced in December 2009 to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power. He was a leading author behind Charter 08, a political manifesto that calls for increased rule of law, greater respect for human rights, and an end to one-party rule in China.

Norway has tried to ease the situation by highlighting that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is independent of the Norwegian government. We cannot [accept] that an independent committees decision shall lead to bilateral relations between Norway and China being affected, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a meeting today with China's ambassador.

But despite Norway's effort to make such distinctions, China has retaliated with a string of rebuffs.


A delegation from Chinas high court, scheduled to meet its Norwegian counterpart this week, canceled because of other urgent obligations and a Chinese military delegation called off its meeting in Oslo with Norways justice ministry at the last minute, according to Ragnhild Imerslund, assistant director general of Norway's foreign ministry.

In addition, many participants from a group representing Chinese researchers, experts, and journalists slated to study the Norwegian welfare state model have canceled next weeks visit to Oslo. An Asian study tour by 17 Norwegian state secretaries for next week has been postponed because key meetings in Beijing were also canceled.

Chinese elders call for political reform

The prize has posed a dilemma for the Chinese government. It has generated a throng of support from countries calling for Lius release, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and most recently a polite suggestion from Japans prime minister that Lius release would be desirable.

The prize has also encouraged voices even within the Communist Party of China to appeal for political reform. Earlier this week, an open letter from Chinese Communist Party elders, including a former secretary to Mao Zedong, called for the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress to end restrictions on expression in China.

The letter urged the Communist Party to abolish censorship and realize citizens right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The petition was started Oct. 1 one week before the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded with just 23 signatures. Since then it has expanded to nearly 500 signatures.

And on Thursday, more than 100 Chinese activists released a separate open letter asking that Liu be released from prison. Norway's foreign minister has also called for Lius release and for his wifes house arrest to be lifted.


Nobel has caused diplomatic tensions before

Norway's diplomatic relations have suffered before over the Nobel Peace Prize, notably with the 1989 award to the Dalai Lama. Primary concern for the moment is over the possible effect on Norway's economic relations with its most important trading partner in Asia.

Norway and China are tentatively scheduled to hold the next round of bilateral trade talks in mid-December, shortly after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10.

Some predict that negotiations may be postponed, but not altogether derailed. China has expressed its dissatisfaction before with other, even larger trading nations such as Germany for receiving the Dalai Lama in 2007 but still come back to the trading table.

It would be hard to overstate how much the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo on October 8 has meant to Chinas community of dissidents, bloggers, and activists. Not only has it lifted their spirits tremendously; many also view it as a possible turning point in the long struggle to bring democracy and human rights to their country. Their ebullience seems unaffected by the hostile reaction of the Chinese government, which has called the Nobel Committees decision obscene and an insult to China. Chinese authorities have spread the message in Chinas state-run media that Liu Xiaobo is a criminal serving time in prison, but without quoting even a small sample of the words or ideas that have caused him to be there; and they have escalated their harassment of Lius friends and colleagues.

On October 14, one hundred and nine of those friends and colleagues released on the Internet the open letter that follows. The signers include Zhang Zuhua, Wen Kejian, Wang Debang, and others who worked with Liu Xiaobo on Charter 08, the citizens pro-democracy statement that became the main reason for Liu Xiaobos 11-year prison term. The co-signers include many other distinguished figures: rights lawyers Pu Zhiqiang and Teng Biao; Dai Qing , the journalist and environmental activist; the novelist and democracy theorist Wang Lixiong; the Tibetan poet Woeser; veteran publisher Yu Haocheng; film scholar (and translator of Vaclav Havel into Chinese) Cui Weiping; senior academicians in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Zi Zhongyun, Xu Youyu and Zhang Boshu. Co-signers came from all across China, including two each from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

After release of the letter, its organizers invited signatures from anyone in the world, and within days hundreds more had signed. Readers of this blog are welcome to sign, too, by writing to freexiaoboliu@gmail.com. An updated list of signers can be found at http://wexiaobo.org.

Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities continue to try to control how the story is perceived both at home and abroad. Liu Xia, who is Liu Xiaobos wife, is under house arrest without having been charged, which violates Chinese law and is bad press internationally for the regime. Her telephone and computer have been confiscated, but she managed to get this message out on October 16 by Twitter on a cell phone:

One of the policemen watching me said that it was his wifes birthday and that he wanted to go shopping for her. But his orders were that he had to stay with me, so would I like to accompany him to the shopping mall? Sure, I thought, and went. When we got to the mall, I noticed all kinds of strange people photographing me from various angles. I realized it had all been a trick. The authorities wanted photographs to prove that Liu Xia is free and happily shopping at malls.

This shows, beyond the regimes bald mendacity, that it cares about international opinion.

Beijing - China's crackdown on rights activists following the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo appears to be the toughest since the 2008 Olympic Games, rights groups and activists said on Thursday.

Dozens of prominent activists have been questioned, placed under house arrest or disappeared since Liu was awarded the prize on October 8.

Police have also kept Liu's wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest, cut off her two mobile phone numbers and apparently prevented her from using the internet for the past week.


The Charter '08 for democratic reform was signed by 303 leading Chinese intellectuals, lawyers and rights activists.

Police arrested Liu Xiaobo in December 2008, two days before the release of the charter. He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion for his role in organizing it.

Many of those kept under house arrest since October 8 are Charter '08 signatories, including dissident writer and Christian activist Yu Jie.


The only reason the police gave for his house arrest was that they were instructed to do so by 'higher authorities.'

Yu's mobile phone number was cut off by the service provider, he said.


CHRD said it was compiling an 'ever-growing list' of rights activists subject to police action since October 8.

It issued a statement on Thursday condemning the Chinese government's 'growing crackdown on civil society.'

Among the cases reported by the group was the 'kidnapping' on October 21 of scholar and bookstore owner Liu Suli outside his Beijing home.


In another sign of the authorities' nervousness, police detained Mou Yanxi, an activist in the south-western city of Chongqing, after she apparently light-heartedly said on Twitter that she planned to honour Liu during an anti-Japanese march in the city on Tuesday.

The police then questioned another Chongqing-based activist, Zhang Shijie, who had reported Mou's detention on Twitter.

Police had already summoned Zhang last week to demand the telephone numbers of all the people who had attended a dinner with him and Mou on October 8 to celebrate Liu's Nobel award.

'I refused at that time,'Zhang told dpa by telephone. 'He threatened that if I would not tell him the telephone numbers, their people would take them (the other activists) away,' Zhang said.

Among those who have disappeared since October 8 are Ding Zilin and Jiang Peikun, retired professors who founded the Tiananmen Mothers group, which has appealed repeatedly to the Communist Party to hold a public inquiry into the brutal 1989 crackdown on democracy protestors in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Ding and Jiang, whose 17-year-old son was killed in the 1989 crackdown, are close friends of Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia.

Hong Kong-based Bao Pu, the son of purged Communist Party official Bao Tong, told dpa he had been unable to contact his Beijing-based father by telephone for three weeks, the longest period since the 2008 Olympics.

Xia and other overseas human rights observers expect the government's post-Nobel crackdown on dissidents to continue at least until after the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony on December 10.

One observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the police action appeared to be a continuation of a pre-Olympic crackdown that began in 2006.

He said it reflected the willingness of China's leaders to use 'increasingly tough measures against those it sees as destabilizing figures.'

BEIJING - Three weeks after jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was named winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the government in Beijing has defied widespread international criticism and continued its crackdown on human rights activists and lawyers.

The ongoing duress - which includes confining some to their homes, following and harassing others and alleged secret detentions - has prompted calls for President Obama and other leaders to raise the issue of Liu's release and human rights in general with Chinese President Hu Jintao during an upcoming summit in Seoul.

Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, remains under house arrest with her telephone apparently cut off. Reporters who try to visit her West Beijing apartment are turned away by plainclothes policemen.
In an open letter this week published by a human rights group, Liu Xia asked about 140 activists, scholars and lawyers to travel to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Liu's behalf.


Yang, who spoke by phone from New York, said Liu Xia asked him about two weeks ago to work with the Nobel committee on the technical details of acceptance ceremony, including who might attend and whether they will be able to read a statement approved by Liu Xiaobo.

This week, a group of 15 past Nobel Peace Prize-winners, including former president Jimmy Carter, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama co-signed a letter asking the leaders of the Group of 20 major industrialized countries to put pressure on China at next month's summit.


Liu, 54, a prominent writer, professor and veteran of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, was sentenced in December to 11 years in prison for his role in promoting Charter 08, an online manifesto and petition calling for greater freedom and an end to one-party rule in China.



The government-controlled media meanwhile kept up their fierce criticism of Liu. In an online article headlined "Who Is Liu Xiaobo?" the official Xinhua news agency called him "extreme and arrogant" and "the West's tool," saying he took money from overseas groups.

The Xinhua article said the aim of Charter 08 "was to alter the political system and overturn the government," adding, "Liu's activities have crossed the line of freedom of speech into crime."
The crackdown on other activists also showed no sign of abating.

Pu Zhiqiang, a civil rights lawyer, said he was detained for three days in a hotel after the Nobel announcement Oct. 8 and remains under heavy surveillance. ""Everywhere I go, a policeman will follow me for sure," he said by phone. "Sometimes I ask them to drive my car for me."

Li Heping, a human rights lawyer, said that on Oct. 8, police brought comforters and slept at the door of his apartment and that they follow him everywhere, including to meetings with clients.



Other dissidents contacted said that they continue to be under surveillance or that their telephones had been turned off.

Rights activists also continue to worry about the fate of Ding Zilin, who heads a group of relatives of victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and who disappeared along with her husband, Jiang Peikun, on Oct. 14. Activists said they feared she is being held in one of the secret makeshift detention centers in hotels, apartments or abandoned factories known here as "black jails."

In Shanghai, activist Feng Zhenghu was taken away by police Monday and has not been heard from since, according to a human rights group.

Also Thursday, in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, the 17-year-old daughter of Gao Zhisheng, an activist lawyer who has been missing since April and believed to be in police custody, asked Obama to raise her father's case with Hu.


Activists and other analysts say they now fear the surveillance and harassment will continue at least through the Nobel awards ceremony in Oslo, as the Chinese government continues to try to calibrate its response to the unwelcome world spotlight on the country's human rights record.

[JURIST] A spokesperson for China's Municipal Higher People's Court on Friday criticized those responsible for granting the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo; JURIST news archive. Liu, who was awarded the 2010 Peace Prize, is currently serving an 11-year sentence for subversion of state power. The unnamed spokesperson reinforced China's dedication to the rule of law and criticized the international community, saying:
China is a nation governed by law. Its judicial sovereignty brooks no interference and the dignity of the judiciary must be safeguarded. Anyone, who violates Chinese law, must be punished according to law. ... China's judicial organs will strictly follow Chinese law and the court verdict, which has come into effect, to execute the punishment given to Liu. ... We strongly oppose some people making arbitrary criticism on China's judicatory with double standards.
While Liu remains imprisoned in China, the Nobel committee is unsure who will accept the award at the ceremony in December. His wife, activist Liu Xia, has been under house arrest in Beijing since earlier this month after visiting her husband in prison to notify him of the award.

The Nobel committee announced that Liu won the 2010 award for being one of China's most prominent non-violent activists. His alleged subversive acts include co-authoring Charter 8, a document critical of China's position as a single-party state and alleged human rights violations, and being a participant in the Tiananmen Square protests. Liu's initial involvement in Tiananmen Square resulted in a two-year prison sentence, while his current 11-year sentence began following a December 2009 trial. Liu appealed his sentence, and a Chinese appeals court upheld the judgment in February. Sarah Cook, the Asia Research Analyst and Assistant Editor for Freedom House, called the sentence, "symptomatic of more systemic problems and politicization of the Chinese legal system."

China vented its anger at the caretakers of the Nobel Peace Prize today by awarding the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize, a day ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Norway, our Calum MacLeod reports from Beijing....

Calum says the haste with which China's rival event was organized became clear at its chaotic award ceremony in the Chinese capital. Confucius Peace Prize jury chairman Tan Changliu, a writer on philosophy, insisted that his jury was a private group, without links to the Chinese government, and denied it was formed in response to the Nobel committee honoring Liu.

The newly created award, named after the venerated Chinese sage whose teachings have been recited for thousands of years, was meant to rival the Nobel Peace Prize, and to lend an air of respectability and gravitas to Chinas rise on the world stage.

But those lofty goals appeared lost on the Taiwanese politician honored as its first winner. In fact, on Wednesday, the politician, Lien Chan, had yet to hear officially that he had won. Or that he was to appear at the ceremony in Beijing on Thursday to claim $15,000 in award money. Or that there was even such a thing as a Confucius Peace Prize.....

Originally Posted by sammi jo

I can't help rolling my eyes whenever rightwingers call Obama a "socialist".

Nominating Obama as a Peace Prize winner is akin to naming Hitler as the 20th Century's "Friend of the Jews".