Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) has instantly achieved global icon status by winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but some dyed-in-the-wool Chinese dissidents are crying foul, seeing the award as a victory for a more moderate, accommodating brand of activism.
Liu, the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize, is a 54-year-old writer imprisoned since December after authoring Charter 08, a manifesto signed by thousands seeking greater rights in the communist nation.
Wei Jingsheng (魏京生) — who spent nearly two decades in prison and is often seen as the father of China’s modern democracy movement — said Liu was more acceptable to the Nobel committee and even Beijing because he worked within the system.
However, Wei said China showed no sign of changing.
“Raising the reputation of moderate reformists would increase people’s desire to cooperate with the government, thus helping stabilize the political situation in China and delaying the time when people overthrow the dictatorial government,” Wei said in Washington, where he lives in exile.
Wei, 60, a former electrician at the Beijing zoo, was sentenced to death row after boldly putting up a poster seeking democracy in 1979. He was finally freed after intervention by then-US president Bill Clinton. Wei was himself often tipped for the Nobel Peace Prize in the past.
He said “tens of thousands” of Chinese other than Liu deserved the award, including Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), a missing human rights lawyer, and Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), who exposed abuses in Beijing’s one-child policy.
In a controversial move, a group of exiled Chinese — not including Wei — wrote an open letter to the Nobel committee calling Liu unsuitable for the prize.
Diane Liu (劉曉東), who blogs under the penname San Mei (三妹) and helped organize the letter, faulted Liu for not highlighting the treatment of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which she called China’s worst human rights problem.
The Falun Gong says it has suffered systematic persecution, including imprisonment and death, since it was banned in 1999.
“The Nobel Prize is for people who speak for human rights. He is not that person,” said Liu, who lives in Chicago. “He deceives the Western world because they don’t read Chinese and they don’t know how tricky the Chinese communist regime plays its game.”
To be sure, many dissidents have saluted Liu Xiaobo. Harry Wu (吳弘達), a Washington-based activist who spent nearly two decades in Chinese labor camps, has led a campaign on social media urging his freedom.
“Liu Xiaobo didn’t organize a party, he didn’t take action, he just said what his ideals were and got 11 years in a prison camp. So that has exposed what the country is and what we can do,” Wu said.
Timothy Cheek, an expert on Chinese intellectuals at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said the Nobel committee faced an “invidious choice” in choosing only one dissident worthy of the prize.
Paradoxically, Cheek said that Liu Xiaobo may have had an advantage because he is in jail, giving the award more of an impact than if it had gone to a former prisoner such as Wei or Wu.
“Liu Xiaobo is an important Chinese intellectual because he does two things — he criticizes the government and he lives in China. And in order to do that and not be dead, you have to make compromises,” Cheek said.
“He’s a democrat, he’s a human rights activist — that’s what he’s after, but he’s willing to make tactical adjustments in order to be effective and the most important one has been remaining inside China,” Cheek said.
“Yes, he hasn’t been as emphatic or hasn’t addressed topics we have addressed internationally,” Cheek said. “But we don’t live in China and we don’t have the police coming around the corner.”
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS