Wow. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Chinese democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo -- perhaps China's best-known dissident -- "for his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China": Nobel Peace Prize Given to Jailed Chinese Dissident.
Liu is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence and two years' deprivation of political rights in China for inciting subversion of state powers. He is one of three people to have received the prize while incarcerated by their own government. The news, of course, did not sit well with Beijing:
Since Liu has no access to a telephone, it's unlikely he would immediately learn of the news. And he obviously won't be able to accept the prize in person. The award includes a gold medal, a diploma and the equivalent of $1.5 million.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the news, calling it a "desecration" of the peace prize and saying it would harm Norwegian-Chinese relations. The Chinese government summoned Norway’s ambassador to protest the award, a spokesman for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry told reporters.
"The Nobel Committee giving the peace prize to such a person runs completely contrary to the aims of the prize," Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman said in a statement posted on the ministry’s Web site. "Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law."
Headlines about the award were nowhere to be found in the Chinese-language state media or on the country’s main Internet portals. Broadcasts about Liu Xiaobo (pronounced Liew Show Boh) on CNN, which reach only luxury compounds and hotels in China, were blacked out throughout the evening. Many mobile phone users reported not being able to transmit text messages containing his name in Chinese.
Ironically, the fact that he won the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison will probably bring even more worldwide attention to Liu's outspoken advocacy for peaceful political change -- the very thing the government was trying to supress when they imprisoned him in the first place. More here: Nobel Prize for Dissident Is Seen as Rebuke to China.