Chinese activist nominated for award

A CHINESE rural campaigner that Amnesty International named recently as an activist who had been silenced because of the Olympic Games has been nominated for a prestigious human rights award.

Liu Jie (55) is currently serving 18 months in one of China's notorious "re-education through labour" camps in Heilongjiang province in the country's far-north region.

She has been proposed for a Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk award, which will be presented by President Mary McAleese on May 1st.

It is the fourth such annual award.

Front Line was founded in 2001 by Mary Lawlor with the aim of protecting human rights defenders at risk either temporarily or permanently because of their work.

Ms Liu was arrested last year after organising a petition calling on the 17th party congress of the Communist Party to implement political and legal reforms.

She has suffered some loss of vision and is likely to go blind if she does not receive the necessary medical treatment.

Earlier this month, Amnesty said the treatment of Liu Jie demonstrated that the Chinese record on human rights was getting worse and not better as the Olympics got closer.

Liu Jie was proposed for the award by Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney.

He said it was appropriate that she was nominated given the current focus on China and its human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics.

Fianna Fáil TD Mary O'Rourke proposed Indonesian human rights lawyer Latifah Anum Siregar, who is involved in defending tribes in Papau, while Roisin Shortall proposed Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar Al-Bunni, who is currently serving a 5 1/2-year jail term.

The other two nominees are Brazilian farmer Valdecy dos Santos, who has taken a stand against the destruction of the environment in the Amazon basin, while Padre Andres Tamayo has been nominated for taking a stand against illegal logging in Honduras.

Speaking at the nominees' launch yesterday, Front Line director Mary Lawlor said the nominated people were "heroes and heroines of our time and we want to protect them".

"It is geared towards protecting a very brave individual. We use it to try and give the person some international credibility and to try and get some media around the world for the nominees so that also acts as a protection," Ms Lawlor said.