Chinese dissident gets Peace Nobel

BEIJING/OSLO, OCT 8
Liu Xiaobo, a jailed pro-democracy dissident, who has been leading a “non-violent struggle” for ending the Communist Party rule in China today won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, angering Beijing, which said the award has been “desecrated” as it honoured a “criminal”.
Fifty-four-old Liu, who was also a key leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, was selected for the prestigious award by the Nobel committee, rejecting China’s demand not to honour him.
Liu was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and non-violent struggle” to secure fundamental human rights for his country’s 1.3 billion people.
Making the announcement in Oslo, Nobel Committee President Thorbjoern Jagland said Liu was “the foremost symbol of the wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China”.
Jagland, reading the citation, said China’s new status in the world in the wake of its phenomenal economic advances “must entail increased responsibility”.
“China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights,” he said.
This is the second time Nobel Prize has been granted to a campaigner for human rights against Chinese government.
The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama was given the prize for tenacious struggle for the rights of Tibetans.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the Nobel committee’s decision and said that the coveted prize was granted to a “criminal.”
The grant of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu desecrated the prize and could harm China-Norway ties, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in jail on December 25, 2009 after a local court in Beijing convicted him of organising an agitation aimed at subverting the government.