Nobel Awarded to Professor of Literature!
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to China dissident Liu Xiaobo
Jefferson lives!
The courage of Liu Xiaobo, a professor of literature in China, is a testament to the message on President Jefferson. There is another message here though as well, China, perhaps inadvertently.
Can anyone imagine a voice as powerful as this even being heard under Mao or Stalin? For that matter are there comparable voices that can be heard in Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Syria? Liu may be evidence that the conservatives are right. The price for wide spread entrepreneurship in China may be a leaky state system. Liu may represent more of a weed then of of Mao’s “tho9usand flowers!”
If he is a weed, lets all hope that his message is good and that it takes root.
Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been named the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
A former professor of literature, Liu received an eleven-year prison sentence in December 2009 for campaigning for political freedoms, including publishing online texts that were critical of China’s government. Liu’s was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.” The verdict was condemned by rights groups and the governments of the US and various European countries.
NY Times I first encountered Liu in early 1989, when he was one of the visionaries behind the Tiananmen democracy movement. Some activists lost their moorings in that heady movement, but Liu didn’t. He encouraged the students in the center of Tiananmen Square to save their lives and retreat, and he negotiated with the soldiers to let them leave. He (along with the singer Hou Dejian) helped avert a bloodbath there.
After Tiananmen, many dissidents fled the country or were silent, but Liu continued to speak out despite arrests, warnings and continuous repression. And a couple of years ago he led the Charter 08 movement, calling for democratic reforms in China. It attracted widespread support and many signatures, and it terrified the Chinese leadership because of the parallels with the Eastern European democratic movement that helped topple governments there in 1989. Charter 08 is what led to Liu’s latest prison sentence.
Chinese stocks up to 5-month high
10-08 16:54
In China, broadcasts of the announcement by CNN were blacked out. Popular Internet sites removed coverage of the Nobel prizes, placed prominently in recent days for the science awards. Messages about “Xiaobo” to Sina Microblog, a Twitter-like service run by Internet portal Sina.com, were quickly deleted. Attempts to send mobile text messages with the Chinese characters for Liu Xiaobo failed.
Tags: Economics, Free Speech, free speech, free speech, Ideas, World
Posted 08 Oct 2010 by theaveeditor
in China, Politics
Liu Xiaobo: Jailed for 11 years in December 2009
Official response from the PRC government
The Norwegian ambassador to PRC had been summoned by the government on 8 October 2010 and was presented with an official complaint against the granting of the Nobel Peace Price to Liu Xiaobo.[56]
The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Bureau had issued a new directive : “Standard copy on Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been approved for distribution, but all media outlets are not allowed to publish it. This includes all print and online media.” [57]
It is amazing to me that there is NO discussion of this on this campus. Are we an extinct race of Martians?