Thaindian News

December 7, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Dictatorial China and 18 other nations have remarked that they will not be present at Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize (NPP) service for the imprisoned Chinese nonconformist, Liu Xiaobo, who has been labeled by the Norwegian Nobel Committee as the leading character of the peaceful battle for the establishment of human rights in China. The 54-year-old Xiaobo was a crucial leader in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations that were brutally suppressed by the Chinese forces in 1989. In 2009, he was awarded an 11-year prison term for ‘provoking sedition’ in China after creating Charter 08, which, controversially, and much to the fury of Communist Beijing, demanded multi-party democracy and reverence for human rights in an authoritarian China.

The delegates of 44 nations will be present at the service on Friday. However, traditional Chinese allies such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Vietnam, among others, have repudiated the invitation to be there at the ceremony. Puritanical Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Russia, etc. will be some of the other countries not represented at the service.

A Chinese bureaucrat has verbalized that an immense majority of the nations would steer clear of the prize ceremony. The spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, has voiced undiplomatically that China would not alter its political personality on account of intrusion by a few jokers. China has also stated that the bestowment of the prize to Xiaobo was an insult to its judicial independence as Xiaobo has been labeled as a lawbreaker by the Chinese legal system.

The Nobel Committee’s Secretary, Geir Lundestad, has vocalized that the rejection of the invitations by some nations is obviously due to pressure exerted by China, which has invested colossal cash into the economy of some of these nations. China has, apparently, utilized its economic and political power to browbeat these nations.

The most powerful human rights bureaucrat of the United Nations, Navi Pillay, has been disparaged for her refusal to participate in the event on Friday. Geir Lundestad, however, has expressed his gratitude to significant developing nations such as India, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa for their readiness to grace the event with their presence.

Backers of Xiaobo’s discharge from prison have dismissed the Chinese assertion that a majority of the world will not represent itself at the prize ceremony and that much of the world endorses the Chinese stance on Xiaobo. They have called the Chinese claim a source of poppycock.

The Nobel committee has resolved to signify the laureate with a vacant chair during the awards ceremony on Friday. The committee has remarked that the vacant chair would be emblematic of the pitiless and unjust Chinese policy of segregating and penalizing peaceful dissenters.