CHINESE ENVIRONMENTAL activist Dai Qing said yesterday she will attend the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo next month, even as Beijing steps up a crackdown on the country’s critics and activists.
China believes awarding the Nobel to Mr Liu is a travesty that mocks its justice system, and the ceremony on December 10th in Oslo is set to become a controversial event. The award to Mr Liu has pushed China’s human rights record back up the agenda, even though most countries tend to focus more on trade these days when visiting China.
Mr Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, released a letter asking named friends and fellow dissidents to attend. The names add up to a roll call of dissent in China, including lawyers, activists, academics and others who call for democracy and press freedom in China.
“Xiaobo says this peace award actually belongs to all the souls who died on June 4th . I think this award belongs to all of the fearless Chinese who protect the dignity of every single Chinese citizen,” she wrote.
Her list includes missing dissident lawyers like Gao Zhisheng, film directors Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen, blogger Han Han, leader of the Tiananmen Mothers Ding Xilin, Tibetan poet Woeser, and Ms Dai, who rose to fame as an opponent of the Three Gorges Dam. Her book criticising the project, Yangtze! Yangtze! earned her 10 months in prison, during which she was threatened with the death sentence.
In a reply to Ms Liu’s letter, in which she said she was proud to attend the ceremony, Ms Dai wrote: “In the past 20 years, how many Chinese people with noble ideals have been persecuted or detained? And how many people have endured extreme emotional distress for calling for a better society?” She drew parallels between Liu Xiaobo and fellow laureates Carl von Ossietzky, incarcerated by the Nazis, and Burmese social activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest.
“When the news was announced they, like Liu, had both been in custody. I was honoured to be included in Liu Xia’s long list of ‘Xiaobo’s fellow friends’. Compared with our current territorial and resource challenges and other pressing concerns, Xiaobo’s matter would seem to have an easy resolution: Release Xiaobo,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, China’s best known and most controversial artist, Ai Weiwei, was still under house arrest last night to stop him travelling to Shanghai for a party to mark the demolition of his new Shanghai studio.
Mr Ai, who recently exhibited in the Tate Modern in London, had been invited to build a studio in a new art district in the city’s north, but officials changed their mind after it was built and declared it an illegal structure, possibly fearful of controversy dogging the artist.
