Nobel choice sends message to Chinese
The Montreal Gazette, Oct. 12, on Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo:
The Nobel Peace Prize’s excellent decision to give this year’s award to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has already had an electrifying effect.
China has reacted with outraged fury but the rest of the world, normally so mesmerized by China’s enormous economic clout, has snapped briefly to order. The government of Canada, like many others around the world, quickly praised the award.
The international community has for too long been too complacent about the human costs of China’s authoritarian regime and its disdain for basic rights supposedly guaranteed by the country’s constitution. We have all been sharply reminded that there are higher values than cheap manufacturing capacity.
Blustering, the Chinese foreign ministry called the award a “desecration” and an “obscenity,” and suggested that it will “harm” Norwegian-Chinese relations. This is the true face of China’s government: bullying, intolerant, obdurate in the face of criticism. The Nobel committee, whose courageous choice does much to atone for its absurd decision last year to award the prize to newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama, obviously hopes that the award to Liu will chip away at Beijing’s inflexibility.
An essayist, critic and pro-democracy activist, Liu is his country’s most famous dissident, at least outside the country. Inside China, where the Internet, phone system, and other means of communication are tightly monitored, it is not thought that many people know anything about Liu or his work. But some things can’t be kept secret. Word of mouth will slowly but certainly spread this news across China. …
This year the Peace Prize committee was careful to praise China for lifting millions of its citizens from poverty. Fair enough. But it also rightly reminded the regime that economic success does not replace responsibility to uphold human rights. …