Four years on, Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo still unable to collect prize from Chinese prison
As Malala Yousafzai wins this year's award, human rights groups call for 2010 winner Liu Xiaobo not to be forgotten as he remains locked in a Chinese jail serving an 11-year sentence
The empty chair with a diploma and medal that should have been awarded to Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo stands in Oslo City Hall Photo: 2010 AFP
10 Oct 2014
Four years after Chinese university professor Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work campaigning for democratic rights in China – he has still not been able to collect his prize in person.
Leading human rights groups called on Friday for Liu, 58, not to be forgotten as he remains locked in a Chinese jail serving an 11-year sentence for circulating his 'Charter 08’ petition that called for greater democratic rights in China.
His wife, Liu Xia, who has never committed a crime, remains under house arrest in Beijing and was admitted to hospital earlier this year.
While expressing “delight” at the awards for Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, leading human rights groups who have campaigned for Liu’s release said that the plight of the 2010 laureate must not be forgotten.
“We cannot forget that another Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo remains imprisoned four years on since being awarded his Prize,” Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty International told The Telegraph, “Amnesty continues to campaign tirelessly for Liu Xiaobo’s release.”
Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch added: “While it is marvellous to see the efforts around education and freeing children from slavery being honoured, that is tempered by some extent knowing that Liu Xiaobo still has five years to go in prison for doing nothing more than speaking his mind,”
Liu was a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations that left several hundred dead after China’s ruling Communist Party sent in tanks to crush the protests. He was represented by an empty chair at the awards ceremony in Oslo in 2010.
The decision to award him the prize “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China” infuriated Beijing who immediately froze diplomatic ties with Norway in retaliation.
This week a US report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China warned that China’s human rights record has worsened in key areas over the past year and that limits on free speech and assembly are growing.
Critics of the prize noted that the Nobel Committee, which is independent of the Norwegian government, had this year shied away from more politically difficult choices, such as Edward Snowden, who leaked US surveillance secrets or Russia’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
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