|
Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize this year did not go to someone who had achieved peace like Teddy Roosevelt, not to someone who didn't deserve it like Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. This year, the Nobel committee used its platform to embarrass a dictatorial regime. The award has gone to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The decision to give him the award has upset the Communist regime in Beijing no end. For that reason alone, it is a good choice.
Mr. Liu is one of those people who believe that the Chinese people deserve to speak their minds, deserve a government that serves the people and deserve a future in which their aspirations matter. For that, the Communists in power have sentenced him to 11 years for "inciting subversion of state power." He has already served 3 years in a labor camp. His latest crime, as Reuters put it:
On Sept. 30, 1996, Liu and veteran pro-democracy activist Wang Xizhe issued a statement urging the communist authorities to honour a promise in 1945 to give people religious freedom, freedom of the press and speech, and the freedom to form political parties and hold demonstrations. They demanded that Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin be indicted for violating the constitution for saying the Chinese army was under the 'absolute leadership' of the party instead of the state.
Preceding that, he spent 7 months under detention without trial or formal charges after circulating a number of petitions to the parliament. Following the labor camp, he helped to organize the "Charter 08" petition, which called for sweeping political reforms. It was published on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Red Fascists detained him almost immediately, and he spent six months under house arrest.
The Chinese government, which is a puppet of the Communist Party, issued a short, and pissy statement on its foreign ministry's website that said, "The Nobel Peace Prize is meant to award individuals who promote international harmony and friendship, peace and disarmament. Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law. Awarding the peace to Liu runs completely counter to the principle of the award and is also a blasphemy to the Peace Prize." This from a regime that sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to murder citizens who were assembled peacefully to petition their government for redress of wrongful acts.
The award is already being misinterpreted (deliberately or otherwise one cannot say). "I worry about the effect of this prize on China's younger generation," said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Beijing University in today's Independent. "It will be seen as new evidence about how the West is unfriendly to China." That is, of course, pure bovine excrement. One doesn't give awards to dissidents because one is unfriendly to an oppressed people. One gives such awards because one is friendly and is tired of seeing them oppressed. The Nobel committee, and the West as a whole, does not harbor unfriendly feelings toward China. Such feelings are reserved for governments that lock people up for daring to speak their minds. The ChiCom government is not the Chinese people. Only a true friend of the Chinese people hates the ChiCom government.
© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
Kensington Review Home
|
|
|