China's jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has asked his wife to collect the award in Oslo, she said today, as the Chinese government pressed the case that it is the victim of Western prejudice and plotting.
China has been infuriated by the prize, which in 1989 was given to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who is also reviled by Beijing. He has already congratulated Liu.
"Xiaobo told me he hopes I can go to Norway to receive the prize for him," Liu Xia said by telephone from her home in western Beijing, where she is under virtual house arrest. "I think it will be very difficult," she added, when asked if she thought the government would allow her to go.
Liu Xia said the government had not yet explicitly told her she would not be allowed to go to Norway. The prize will be formally bestowed on Dec. 10 in Oslo.
China has condemned Norway's government, which has no say over the prize, and Oslo's fisheries ministry said on Tuesday the Chinese had cancelled a second meeting with a Norwegian minister.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said awarding the prize to Mr Liu, who is serving 11 years in jail on subversion charges, would not shake China's one-party political system.
"Some politicians in some countries have seized on this chance to speak ill of China. This shows a lack of respect for China's judicial system, and it also leads one to suspect their true motives," Mr Ma told a regular news conference.
"If anyone wants to adopt this method as a way to alter China's political system, to stand in the way of the forward advance of the Chinese people, then plainly they have miscalculated," he said.
Reuters