Liu Xiaobo wins Nobel

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Author and political activist Liu Xiaobo has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Liu, who is known as one of China’s leading dissidents, is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subverting state power” after helping write a manifesto, titled Charter 08, which calls for political change in China. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has the story. Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: Today for the first time, a Chinese citizen in China received a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s something China has long coveted, but the Chinese government isn’t celebrating and the Chinese state-run media aren’t running the story. That’s because this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has gone to democracy activist Liu Xiaobo. He’s current serving an eleven-year sentence on the charge of subversion. His crime, co-authoring an appeal known as Charter 08 that calls for respect for democratic rights in China. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  News rarely travels fast in China when the Chinese government doesn’t want it to. Not surprising then that the most common reaction I got from people on the street to the news that Liu Xiaobo had won the Nobel Peace Prize was, who? This woman, an art auctioneer in her thirties, said she’d never heard of Liu Xiaobo or of the pro-democracy Charter 08. A guy down the road reading a newspaper said he also didn’t know who Liu Xiaobo was.

SPEAKING CHINESE

MAGISTAD: But he said he’s happy China won a Nobel Prize. So was a nineteen-year-old student named Joe.

JOE: It’s really great. For many years, there’s no one [INDISCERNIBLE] Chinese can win such a prize. We’re still really proud.

MAGISTAD: That was before I told him that the winner was in prison.

JOE: Why is he in prison?

MAGISTAD: He said that China should have more political reform and more democracy.

JOE: Only this [INDISCERNIBLE] to that. Sometimes we’re sure that is ridiculous. [INDISCERNIBLE] this man’s real brave. [SOUNDS LIKE] That the man is really a man. We, the young, really want to learn from him.

MAGISTAD: Liu Xiaobo is a literature professor turned democracy activist. He took part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He chided the students for being too brash. But on the night of the crackdown he risked his life to persuade troops to let the students in the Square leave peacefully. He served almost two years in prison after that. He served another three years in detention for slamming the government’s use of subversion charges to silence journalists and intellectuals who criticized it. He’s now in prison on a subversion conviction himself for having helped write the pro-democracy manifesto Charter 08. One of its original 300 or so signatories was lawyer Teng Biao. Today he welcomed the news of his friend’s Nobel Peace Prize.

TENG BIAO:  I think it’s a very important thing for the democratization of China. I hope Nobel Peace Prize can make Mr. Liu Xiaobo released soon. But I know that the Chinese government is very strong. It will control the [SOUNDS LIKE] civil society and human rights activists more [INDISCERNIBLE] than before I think.

MAGISTAD: It’s been pretty tight already in recent years. Pro-democracy lawyers like Teng Biao have been disbarred. One, Gao Zhisheng, has been disappeared. And enough journalists and bloggers have been arrested that others watch what they write. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has publicly tried to gain more respect and affection in the world, while twisting arms behind the scenes at international film festivals and book fairs, to block visitors and creative works it doesn’t like. It tried doing that with the Nobel committee, too. A Chinese vice-minister travelled to Oslo in June and warned that if Liu Xiaobo got the Peace Prize, Norway’s relations with China would suffer. Today, Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, said “China as a rising power should learn to face scrutiny.”

THORBJORN JAGLAND: China’s new status 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.

MAGISTAD: Including the Chinese constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and assembly. But the Chinese government’s response to such observations has tended to be, mind your own business. The Chinese Foreign Ministry today issued a written condemnation of the Nobel committee’s decision. It said awarded the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo ran completely counter to the principal of the Prize and was a kind of blasphemy of the Prize. The government also blocked BBC, CNN and internet news and chatter about the award and told Chinese state-run media not to run the story. But for all this, Liu Xiaobo believes China is on an inevitable path to democracy. He told me in an interview in 2005 that he thinks he’ll see a democratic China in his lifetime. He’s now 54. He says the Soviet Union lasted 70 years and he doubts Chinese communist rule will go on that long.

SPEAKING CHINESE

LIU XIAOBO: I don’t think the change will come over night as in East Europe. China is a big country and its demographics are quite complex. China’s change will be a gradual process. I hope China will change in a gradual process.

MAGISTAD: Hardly the words of a radical, or as the Chinese Foreign Ministry said today, a criminal. But one government’s criminal is the Nobel committee’s pro-democracy icon. And today, Liu Xiaobo enters the pantheon of peace makers. It’s just unclear when word will reach him in his prison cell. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

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