China faces trial by West in Nobel 'farce', says media
Chinese media accused the West on Friday of putting the country on trial and trying to impose foreign values, hours ahead of a ceremony in Norway awarding of the Nobel peace prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo.
CHINESE MEDIA accused the West on Friday of putting the country on trial and trying to impose foreign values, hours ahead of a ceremony in Norway awarding of the Nobel peace prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. "Today in Norway's Oslo, there will be a farce staged: 'The Trial of China'," popular tabloid the Global Times, which is run by Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said in an editorial.
Security was stepped up in Beijing, with a greater number of police vehicles and officers patrolling the city, including around Liu's apartment, Tiananmen Square and Norway's embassy. Police turned away a group of German diplomats who tried to visit Liu's residence, where his wife Liu Xia is presumed to be, still under house arrest. The former literature professor's wife has told Reuters that her husband wants to dedicate the prize to those who died in the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.China was infuriated by the Committee's award to a man it labels a subversive and a criminal, and the row with the Nobel Committee has spilled over into wider diplomacy. he Nobel Committee said on Thursday human rights were basic "universal values" but Communist Party ideologists consider the phrase to be code for Western liberal values. Several nations have heeded Beijing's call to boycott the ceremony, many of them mindful of China's growing economic clout. China declared that the "vast majority" of nations would boycott but the Norwegian award committee said two-thirds of those invited would attend. Liu's fame in the global community was lost on most residents in Beijing. As China gets richer, most ordinary people are far more interested in chasing prosperity than seeking urgent political reforms. "Everything is different now since the revolt of 1989. People's ideas have changed. China has changed," said businesswoman Ma Junpeng. "People like Liu are irrelevant." The Nobel committee has decided to represent the laureate with an empty chair during the ceremony, in what it said was a symbol of Chinese policy to isolate and repress dissidents. It will be the first time that a laureate under detention has not been formally represented since Nazi Germany barred pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from attending in 1935. China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state. Authorities have conducted a sweeping crackdown against activists in the run-up to the Oslo gala and have prevented Liu's friends and family from attending. Among the dissidents who have been rounded up by police are the Charter 08 co-organizer Zhang Zuhua, who was abducted off the street, and author Yu Jie, who recently wrote a book criticizing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders. "China has turned into one giant jail," one activist told Reuters, asking not to be identified for fear of government retribution. Zhang Xianling, who lost her son in the Tiananmen protests, said she had been taken to the southwestern province of Yunnan by the government this week to try and prevent her talking to reporters. "I think the Nobel Peace Prize is helpful in pushing forward democratic politics, otherwise the government would not be frightened like this," she said by telephone. Beijing has blacked out BBC and CNN reports on Liu and his supporters over the past few days, though foreign news channels are generally only available in upmarket hotels and apartment buildings mostly inhabited by foreigners. Gao Mingxuan, a Chinese criminal law expert, told the state-run Xinhua news agency that Liu had been "inciting people to subvert the legitimate state power of the people's democratic dictatorship that is under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and overthrow the socialist system". "These words went beyond the scope of free speech and were harmful to society," Gao said. "If Chinese people do act according to his desire, the country will surely suffer from wars and conflicts, destroying the present peace which China has gained with great efforts." China's denunciations of Liu and the West suggest leaders will be unrelenting in stifling political dissent, even as it has to tackle hundreds of cases of social unrest daily in the world's most populous country. Now the world's second-largest economy, China views criticism of its human rights record as a bid to contain its growing might and it has repeatedly said any changes to its political system should not emulate Western democracies. China -- which also was outraged when the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, won the prize in 1989 -- sees the award as a denial of the dramatic changes that have taken place since it decided to open to the outside world in the late 1970s. "Those few gentlemen in Oslo may think that because of the fame of the Nobel, coupled with the support of some Western political forces, they will win an 'applause'. They are wrong!" the People's Daily said in an editorial, adding the award exposed "the sinister intentions" of the West.
 | Previous Post |
Login
 Login through Social ID
|
Not finding what you are looking for? Search here.
