“Unfortunately, the sentencing to 11 years in prison seems to be forgotten slowly but steadily outside China,” said the International Committee of Support to Liu Xiaobo, according to the Associated Press.
Mr. Liu is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after being charged with subverting state power for helping author a 2008 manifesto called “Charter 08” which called for an end to China’s single-party rule. He won the 2010 peace prize for his work to promote greater human rights protection and democracy in China.
The group of former laureates included Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Desmond Tutu, the AP reported.
Awarding the peace prize to Mr. Liu angered China, which harshly criticized the Norwegian government for the committee’s decision. Beijing has held Mr. Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, largely incommunicado since his imprisonment. Mr. Liu’s case has been overshadowed in China too as of late, by police detention and harassment of China’s most famous contemporary artist Ai Weiwei and of blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng.
The U.S. and European governments have previously taken up calls for Mr. Liu’s release, which China has responded to as an affront to its legal system. At a daily press briefing on Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman said Mr. Liu’s punishment had been administered according to Chinese law.
A U.S. congressional hearing this week also took up Mr. Liu’s case. The noted China scholar Perry Link, who edited a forthcoming English-language collection of Mr. Liu’s essays and poetry, called the activist’s imprisonment a manifestation of Beijing’s denial about its human rights situation.
“When China’s rulers put on a mask of imperturbability as they denounce these Nobel prizes, they not only seek to deceive the world but, at a deeper level, are lying to themselves,” Mr. Link said, according to a written statement. “Liu Xiaobo sits in prison, in physical hardship. But in his moral core, there can be no doubt that he has more peace than the men who persecute him.”
China’s leaders were spooked early this year after anonymous calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” began appearing online. Dozens of lawyers, political activists, artists and others the government perceives as threats were arrested or confined by police to their homes in what became possibly the harshest crackdown on political dissent in more than a decade.
This year’s peace prize was awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman for their roles in promoting peace and gender equality in Africa and in the Arab world.
