On Saturday, Karma will officially receive the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leyman Gbowee, both from Liberia. The three will be honored for “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

At 32, Karman is the youngest person ever to win the peace prize.

For years now, Karman has been one of Yemen’s leading grass-roots activists. She’s fought for the rights of women and freedom of speech. Last January, when the Arab Spring swept through the Middle East, Karman and a couple hundred students from Sana’a University began a sit-in at Yemen’s Change Square.

The government publicly slandered her, and Sana’a clerics blamed her for ruining the morality of women.

But within a few months, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in cities from Aden to Taiz had joined the demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of the regime.

Karman has been dubbed the “Mother of the Revolution,” and when she speaks, people listen.

At a recent protest in front of the United Nations in New York, Karman led a group of Yemenis in chants against the regime. Some came from across the country to see her.

Since being named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Karman has travelled from Doha to Washington, DC, to generate international pressure on the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“I am here to tell the whole world, to tell the people who believe in freedom, my people in Yemen sleep in the street since nine months, this great people deserve freedom,” Karman said. “This is the thing that I will tell people here. Also I want to tell people in Sana’a that you are not alone, there are people here who care about your freedom and their role starts now.”

Saleh recently agreed to step down as president in exchange for immunity. Karman and her followers argue that’s not enough, because Saleh’s cronies – including his son and other family members – remain in power.

But some long-time Yemeni opposition leaders support the deal, and that’s created a rift in the anti-Saleh movement.

“The opposition parties, opposition leaders, were never the voice of the revolution,” said Raja Althaibani, a Yemeni-American who flew to Sana’a in May to join the youth revolution on the ground; she’s protested alongside Karman.

“The people who are signing the deal those are people who are looking for their own interest,” Althaibani said. “We’ve always seen clashes between the revolutionaries on the ground and those leaders. And the revolutionaries have always made it clear, they aren’t representative of who we are or our demands.”

This popular sentiment could have put Tawakul Karman at odds with demonstrators. While she’s been a leader of the youth movement since the start of the revolution, Karman is also a leading member in the Islah party, the country’s main Islamist opposition party.

Karman has been criticized for this dual role. But Althaibani said Karman has proved herself time and time again. Althaibani recalls one particular demonstration in Sana’a.

“I get a call saying Tawakul is leading the march, and the youth are behind them and we’re running there and then we hear shots,” Althaibani said. She said Karman was taken to a makeshift hospital, and then came right back.

“She put her life on the line and made enemies of every opposition leader at the Square,” Althaibani said.

Karman has criticized her party for going against the young demonstrators’ demands. She has also defied religious and cultural gender constraints to call her own party and the regime for underestimating the role woman have played in Yemen’s revolution.

“Now there is a new century, a new period, women aren’t just victim,” Karman said. “She can save lives, she can be revolution, she can step down the regimes and she can also build her country. So the bad image about women is finished. Now we start a new period.”

Liberians go to the polls on Tuesday to choose a president, less than a week after the incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was named a Nobel Peace Prize winner. It’s a pretty heady campaign endorsement, and it’s angered the other candidates in the race. But the Nobel is no guarantee that Sirleaf will win re-election.

Sao Marwlo drives a motorcycle taxi in the capital Monrovia seven days a week. He’s 19, and he can’t afford school fees to finish high school. He only earns about $60 a month. He said he won’t be voting for Sirleaf.

“The Old Ma, she really fooled us,” Marwlo said, using Sirleaf’s nickname, Ma Ellen. “She promised us a lot of things, and she never did it.”

He said Sirleaf promised free education for all and well-paying jobs, but she didn’t deliver. He’s most angry that Liberia’s police force remains largely corrupt. He said police can arrest people like him for no real reason, just to extort money.

Liberian youth like Marwlo could be a deciding factor in the presidential election. More than half of Liberia’s registered voters are under the age of 32.

Famous soccer star, George Weah (left), is running for Vice President and boosting the popularity of presidential candidate Winston Tubman. (Photo: Bonnie Allen)

Their platform isn’t much different from Sirleaf’s, but Weah’s presence on the ticket is a huge draw for young men. They’ve latched onto the ‘vote for change’ mantra.

“I’m voting for George Weah,” said one young man in Monrovia. “George Weah is the person who can make a better change.”

Weah is hailed as a native Liberian, far removed from the elite politicians who have historically ruled Liberia. He grew up in a slum and achieved fame and fortune as a professional athlete.

That impresses many young men more than Sirleaf’s Nobel. They say Weah will find them good jobs.

Still, for many it’s an unrealistic expectation. In a slum known as Sugar Hill, some ex-combatants sit down to talk to me, their eyes glazed over from smoking marijuana.

Mohamed Kuma, 22, is a former child soldier. He first held a gun when he was 12. A decade later, he steals cellphones to survive.

“I don’t got a job to do,” Kuma said, “so at the end of the day, I will still come on the street to steal. I will always steal from people.”

The International Crisis Group suggests that ex-combatants, like Kuma, pose the greatest risk to Liberia’s fragile peace this election. In the past week, many Liberians have withdrawn their money from the bank and stocked up on rice just in case violence breaks out. Steven Forkpa, a Monrovia store owner, said people are nervous.

“It put fear in people, so that’s why they’re buying more rice than ever before,” he said.

More than half of registered voters in Liberia are under the age of 32. (Photo: Bonnie Allen)

At Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s last campaign appearance, the Nobel laureate called for peace.

It’s considered unlikely that Sirleaf or any candidate will achieve an outright victory on the first ballot. Tensions could continue to simmer if, as expected, the vote goes to a run-off in early November.

On a sandy soccer field in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, more than a hundred women hold a prayer vigil for a peaceful election. These are the same women who staged a peace movement to end Liberia’s civil war in 2003.Their leader was Leymah Gbowee. On Friday, she was named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist, Tawakkul Karman.

As news reached the women in Monrovia, Berniece Freeman celebrated.

“Leymah sat on this very field, we started it together, and she got this award,” Freeman said. She added that the award is for all Liberian women who sat in the rain and the sun, who were raped, whose families were killed.

Berniece Freeman and Cecelia Danuweli, standing on the soccer field where Liberian woman staged their peace movement. (Photo: Bonnie Allen)

More than 200,000 people died in Liberia’s civil war. An estimated 70 percent of women experienced some kind of sexual assault during the conflict. The Women in Peacebuilding Network, led by Leymah Gbowee, recruited more than two thousand women to assemble in Monrovia, where they prayed, sang, and fasted for days, dressed all in white. They organized a sex strike. Their message to men — No Peace, No Sex.

They eventually got a meeting with Liberia’s then-president, Charles Taylor, and called for a ceasefire and peace talks. The war ended shortly after.

Two years later, Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female president.

Today, Cecelia Danuweli, a mother of six, said Sirleaf has given Liberian women pride and dignity.

“She has brought us together as women, she has made us realize that what men can do, women can also do,” Danuweli said. “She has also given us that motivation to learn, and to go higher in education. All of these women here, they know what their rights stand for. You cannot just trample upon them, no way.”

In the past six years, Sirleaf has reformed property laws to give women the right to own land; she’s introduced tough punishments for rape and increased girls’ enrollment in schools. She’s also built market halls for women, and rolled out microfinance programs. Sirleaf said she views today’s award as a recognition of her long years of as an activist in Liberia, one who advocated for reconciliation and women’s rights.

“I’ve paid a heavy price that many people don’t realize,” Sirleaf said, speaking in Monrovia Friday after the award was announced. “I’ve gone to prison more than once, at a time that many people did not know of the struggle.”

Sirleaf added that award sends a signal to Liberians, calling on them to be peaceful and do more for reconciliation.

But the timing of the Nobel announcement is provoking controversy at home. It comes just four days before the presidential vote, something that could potentially help Sirleaf win re-election.

“I certainly hope so,” she said, “and I hope Liberians will see this as a plus. They will see this as a message to them.”

Sirleaf’s challengers have been quick to criticize the prize. Her main opponent, Winston Tubman, called it “a provocative interference” in Liberian politics.

“She doesn’t deserve this honor,” said Tubman in a telephone interview. “I feel it is undeserved because she has brought war here; she is warmonger. She didn’t stop the war at all.”

In a slum of Monrovia, a group of ex-combatants complained today that Sirleaf brought rebels to Liberia.

“We don’t want anybody who brought war to Liberia,” they said.

Indeed, Sirleaf has admitted that she gave money to Charles Taylor to launch his rebellion in 1990 to bring down the dictator, Samuel Doe. But Sirleaf maintains she didn’t realize that mass atrocities would follow. She has said that if she cast her lot with a war criminal, she did it unwittingly.

In 2009, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that she be banned from public office for 30 years for her early involvement in the civil war.

Today’s Nobel Peace prize honors Sirleaf and Gbowee for their non-violent struggle in Liberia for the safety of women and women’s rights.

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Marco Werman: As we mentioned earlier, the third recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is Tawakul Karman. The Yemeni pro-democracy activist heard the news in the capitol, Sanaa.

Tawakul Karman: [speaking Arabic]

Werman: Karman said she didn’t even know she was nominated. She dedicated her share of the Nobel to “all the martyrs and wounded of the Arab Spring.” Letta Taylor is a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. She knows Tawakul Karman and is familiar with her work.

Letta Taylor: Tawakul Karman is an irrepressible force and one of the pivotal figures behind the Yemen protests. She’s also one of the few role models for women in Yemen. And I think that awarding this prize to a Yemeni activist and to a woman at that provides a jolt of energy and inspiration to the hundreds of thousands of Yemeni protestors who’s eight-month struggle has been largely forgotten in the midst of other world crises.

Werman: Letta, I understand that you had an interesting phone conversation with Tawakul Karman earlier this year when the demonstrations in Yemen just began.

Taylor: Yes, I called Tawakul and asked her what she was up to. And she very breathlessly told me that she was in the process of organizing a peaceful revolution inspired by events in Tunisia to force the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who’d ruled the country for 33 years. And I was very skeptical. I thought well, good luck, this is Yemen, change is almost impossible. Little did I know that eight months later the protests would be going strong.

Werman: And what’s her background? Is she a grassroots activist or a professional, like a lawyer?

Taylor: She’s just been primarily a full time activist for the past several years. She’s also a mother of three. I don’t know when she sleeps. I don’t know when she eats because she is constantly on the go. She began as a journalist and comes from a prominent family. She has a lot of friends in high places, which I think has helped protect her to some degree. Nevertheless, she’s received numerous threats to her life. She’s been beaten. She’s been threatened with the jambiya which is the traditional dagger than Yemeni men wear strapped to their waist. So she’s certainly not immune to danger. As a journalist she founded a news service called Women Journalists Without Chains and this was almost a precursor to Twitter. She would send out news alerts, mostly on government violations against journalists, activists and others exercising free speech or free assembly. And soon gained dozens then hundreds, then thousands of subscribers before the authorities shutdown her operation.

Werman: Interesting, so she’s well-known in Yemen. Apparently some Yemenis though, even those that oppose President Saleh are not happy that Ms. Karman has gotten the prize. Why did they take issue with it?

Taylor: I believe that Tawakul Karman is a controversial figure to some degree and I think that’s because she is a woman in a male-dominated society, and does manage to do what most men cannot do. So I think there is some resentment. Also, Tawakul is very publicity savvy and I think some of her detractors see her as a publicity hound. I would say instead that she is a shrewd and gifted communicator in a country where this is unusual.

Werman: Right, so if it’s unusual, I mean how active have women been in the uprising in Yemen? Are they able to be activists there? I mean apparently Tawakul is.

Taylor: Yes, many women actually have been active in the uprising, a surprising number given the restraints that they face in the country. While Tawakul is one of the leaders, many other women, increasing numbers have played an important role in the protests and they’re braving beatings, harassment, and in many cases shame from relatives. I’ve spoken with young women who told me that they are protesting fervently, telling their parents they’re going to visit a relative or going to the market when instead, they’re joining rallies. With Tawakul receiving the peace prize perhaps more women in Yemen will fell that they can come out of the shadows and join protests.

Werman: Letta Taylor, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York filling us in on Tawakul Karman, one of the three Nobel Peace Laureates announced today. Thanks very much, Letta.

Taylor: Thank you very much for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Bachelet was president of Chile from 2006 to 2010.

She was the first woman president of her country and she is now head of the new UN organization devoted to women.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Michelle Bachelet was president of Chile from 2006 to 2010. She was the first woman president of her country. She’s now head of the new UN organization devoted to women. I wanted to ask you, Ms. Bachelet, what you think of these three women being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. What was your reaction?

Michelle Bachelet: Well, I was so happy and so thrilled with the news, first of all because from the three of them I know personally two of them and I think all three women are exemplary in their work and their lives and it’s also this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is an important acknowledgement of what women have been demanding for years and that is the equal involvement of women in world peace, security, and democracy decisions. Because we really know that women involvement is instrumental, essential, for achieving lasting peace and stability but yet to often they are still excluded from the negotiating tables and I think the decision is indicative of greater progress to come.

Werman: And the Nobel committee said it sends a very important signal to women all over the world. Do you think that is the message then?

Bachelet: That is centrally the message. Women models, women can made a difference, and we need to ensure as soon as possible women should be fully incorporated at all official levels in decision making processes.

Werman: I can’t help but wonder though why the award went to three women working not on one project together to promote women’s rights but taking three distinct tracts to further that goal. Does it, in your opinion, dilute the impact of this?

Bachelet: No, I think it’s a great combination because on one hand you have extraordinary president like President Johnson Sirleaf that she has had the possibility of fighting for peace and security and women’s rights at the top of the top of the decision but on the other hand you have another Liberian women from different societies so it gives women in different levels of a society doing the same thing and being able to be awarded for their work. But on the other hand it speaks also about women in another part of the world that is also struggling for peace and for human rights as the Gemini leader. So I think it’s a great combination because it speaks about the past but also speaks about the present and the future.

Werman: For women who are not in war zones like many of our listeners here in the United States, what would you hope is the message from the Peace Prize today?

Bachelet: Well I think the message is that women can. Women can be relevant in all levels of the society but also it means for a country like the US or other developed countries that even the women in better shape in other parts of the world, there’s still a lot of areas we need to improve because there’s still a big gap on salaries for example between men and women. There’s still violence against women and so on and so I believe that no country can afford to lose the potential that women can bring to a country.

Werman: Your new UN organization, UN Women, has suffered from poor funding. I’m wondering whether you think this Nobel Peace Prize, these three awards, will make increases in funding for UN Women a priority.

Bachelet: Well, we have had issues on funding because of the current situation, not because of lack of politics of support and I hope this will help because it’s all we say that women are essential in terms of achieving different goals of humanity. We need to be sure that this is not also lip service. We need to ensure that this kind of activities receive the support they need.

Werman: Michelle Bachelet was the first woman president of Chile. She now runs the organization UN Women. Thank you very much for your time indeed.

Bachelet: Thank you, Marco, very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

They were recognized for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Sirleaf is Africa’s first female elected head of state, Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist and Karman is a leading figure in Yemen’s pro-democracy movement.

Announcing the prize in Oslo, Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said: “We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women achieve the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.”

“It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize… will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent,” said the citation.

The World’s previous coverage featuring Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee:

• Rebuilding of Liberia After War – an interview with Leymah Gbowee
• Lisa Mullins interviews Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – ‘Ma Ellen’ – and her Liberian Presidential Re-election Bid – a report from Bonnie Allen
• Liberian Proverbs - a report from Jason Margolis featuring Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
• Liberia’s Market Women - a report from Jessie Graham featuring Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
• The New President’s First Year – a second report from Jessie Graham featuring Sirleaf after her first year as president

See what people are saying about the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winners

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this The World.  54-year old Chinese activist, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia today.  Liu remains in prison.  At a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, Liu was represented by an empty chair.  China called the ceremony in Oslo a political farce. Well, we wondered if any news of the event as available in China.  So we asked The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad, what it was like to be there today?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, it’s ostensibly like any other day, you switch around through the Chinese news channels, the Chinese channels in general, and there was certainly no mention of the Nobel ceremony today.  You couldn’t see it on those channels.  And for those Chinese who do get CNN or the BBC, and it’s certainly a minority, those stations were blocked when they were streaming the Nobel ceremony live. What is interesting is that the official state-run media did start putting out a message about the Nobel prize, saying this is an attempt by western governments, western powers, to ram their values down China’s throat; and it’s hegemony, it’s imperialism, and it’s showing incredible disrespect for our rule of law and our judicial system because Liu Xiaobo is a convicted criminal.

Mullins: So on the one hand they were kind of pretending it wasn’t happening at all today.  On the other hand they were saying this is an effort of tremendous pressure on the part of imperial powers.

Magistad: Well, they weren’t pretending that it wasn’t happening, but they didn’t want to make a big deal of letting people see the ceremony.  It was a very poignant ceremony, having an empty chair with the award being put on the empty chair where Liu Xiaobo couldn’t be because he’s in prison in China; where there were a large number of people who’d shown up to show respect for Liu Xiaobo and all he stood for in China; where the actress, Liv Ullmann, read a long passage that had been written and spoken by Liu Xiaobo just before he was convicted and given an 11 year prison sentence for having coauthored Charter 08, which is basically calling for the Chinese government to allow the civil liberties that are guaranteed by the Chinese constitution and also to allow multi party democracy in China. The Chinese government didn’t want the Chinese public to see any of that.  What it did want them to see or hear if it was going to hear anything about the Nobel Peace Prize, was to hear from the Chinese government that this prize was being used as a political tool by western powers, and sub text mostly the United States, to embarrass China, to make China look bad, and to denigrate China’s legal system.

Mullins: Mary Kay, you live in Beijing, I wonder if you were able to see or hear any of that?

Magistad: Well, what I did with a group of friends was to watch the ceremony streamed through VPN, Virtual Private Network, online from the Nobel committee’s website.

Mullins: And that wasn’t blocked?

Magistad: Well, again, we were going through a VPN and several million Chinese have access to a VPN; so basically it’s a way of circumventing whatever blockages there are online…because you basically look like you’re on a different website entirely; and then from that website you can go anywhere you want to go. I think that it’s important to note that in part because the Chinese government has been successful in blocking this news, a large number of people, even middle class, otherwise switched on people just don’t know about this, don’t have the context to put it in, don’t know who Liu Xiaobo is, and don’t even really know that the first Nobel Prize of any kind has been awarded to a Chinese citizen.

Mullins: And would you say that the majority of Chinese get their news from the Chinese official news outlets, and therefore, they heard only what the Chinese government wanted them to hear about this?

Magistad: Absolutely.  I would say the average Chinese internet user, for instance, and that would be the younger middle class, upper middle class Chinese would be getting their news from sites like sohu.com or sina.com, which are news aggregators.  And they get their news from places like Xinoa[?3:52], peoplesdaily, etc.  And they’re also told by the Chinese censors what they can and cannot put on their websites.

Mullins: And when you were trolling the internet yourself, were there certain terms for instance, certain names that you could not get because they were blocked by the Chinese government?

Magistad: Well, everyday there are thousands of websites you can’t go to, thousands of different sorts of terms that will end up giving you a screen saying your connection has been unexpectedly dropped.  And it’s hard to say whether today there were extra names or extra phrases that hadn’t been there yesterday, or last week, or last month — because they change all the time. What was new over the last couple of days is that CNN and the BBC were blocked in terms of their actual broadcasts to be able to see them on television.  And also their websites were blocked. I was able to go to both Google news and Yahoo news in English and get to stories about Liu Xiaobo and about the Nobel ceremony without going through a VPN.  So there are holes in the censorship even of this story.

Mullins: Thank you very much, from Beijing, China, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad, thanks very much for the update.

Magistad: Thank you, Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Liu Xiaobo (Image: Voice of America)

An empty chair at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will mark the absence of the honoree, human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence, on the charge of trying to subvert state power.

He had helped write and circulate a petition two years ago, called “Charter ’08,” calling for human rights and a multiparty democracy in China. Liu also served a previous prison term for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations.

The Chinese government is furious with the award. Officials say giving such an award to a convicted criminal is a political act, aimed at embarrassing China. And China has expended considerable capital to hush up the news at home.

This year is the first time a Chinese citizen living within China has ever received any kind of Nobel Prize, which has long been coveted in China. Not that all that many people in China even know it’s happened.

“Sorry, I don’t pay a lot of attention to these kinds of things,” said one businessman in Beijing.

A young nurse named Zhang said she’d heard of Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Peace Prize. “But it’s not for sure yet, right? Anyway, I think he’s some kind of medical doctor.”

And a young man asked whether Liu Xiaobo wasn’t an American.

All of which suggests that the Chinese government has been pretty successful in its campaign to keep the news of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize from the Chinese public.

Phelim Kine, a China researcher for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, said China has purged the Internet of any mention of Liu’s award, and banned state media from mentioning it.

Kine also said China has tried to use similar tactics internationally, first warning the Nobel Committee that awarding Liu Xiaobo the peace prize would hurt Norway’s relations with China.

“And since then,” said Kyne, “the Chinese government has launched this furious campaign to try to dissuade governments from sending any representatives to Oslo or from offering congratulations on December 10th to Liu Xiaobo.”

The Chinese government has persuaded representatives of 18 governments to boycott tomorrow’s ceremony. It has also detained dozens of human rights activists in China, and prevented several of them from traveling abroad, lest any show up at Friday’s Nobel ceremony. Meanwhile, the tone at the regular Foreign Ministry news briefings has become strident.

“We will not change our path because of the interference of a few clowns,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. She added that China will continue ruling the country by law, in a way suitable to China’s conditions.

This, in a year when the Chinese government has spent billions of dollars expanding its global media footprint and trying to increase its soft power — the power of getting others to like you and even want to emulate you. That term was coined by Joseph Nye, an international relations professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

On a visit to Beijing last week, he said the Chinese government’s response to the Nobel Peace Prize award is undoing its own best efforts to win soft power.

“I think there’s an awareness by some people that this is very costly to them, that when you’re in a hole, you stop digging,” Nye said. “And they have kept digging. And I think they’re now locked into the position. And it’s hurting them.”

The heavy-handed reaction suggests a government that is at once confident in using its growing international clout, and still deeply insecure about criticism, both at home and abroad. Criticism is what landed Liu Xiaobo in prison. He’s also called for a multi-party democracy, and the civil rights already enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

When I interviewed him in 2005, he said he thought he’d see both in China within his lifetime – although, he predicted, they will and should come gradually.

“The government has tried to buy off the elites with a comfortable lifestyle, and that’s much more effective than ideological propaganda or crackdowns,” Xiaobo said.

On the other hand, he added, there’s the Internet. “The regime is stiff, but society has already changed.”

This week, within China, the Chinese government seems to have succeeded in shutting out news of Liu Xiaobo’s peace prize. But in the longer game, it’s the man in prison, the one for whom a chair stands empty in Oslo, who may have the last laugh.
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• Syracuse University’s Impunity Watch blog
• Nobel Prize website
• BBC: China turns up the rhetoric
• Liu Xiaobo on The World

• Peter Osnos: how China elevates the Nobe Peace Prize

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Liu Xiaobo was the fourth person to be named a Nobel Peace prize winner while in prison or under house arrest. He shares that dubious honor with winners from Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, and military-ruled Myangmar. This year’s Nobel Peace prize ceremony will mark only the second time in the award’s history that neither the laureate or a representative is going to be able to personally accept the reward. The first time was in 1936 when the Peace prize was to be awarded to a German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky. Veteran foreign correspondent Peter Osnos says that China’s obstructionist reaction to the prize this year has backfired already in one key way.

Peter Osnos: It made the recipient of the prize an internationally known name, when wasn’t at the time that he received the award. That’s what’s so extraordinary: their goal was to shut this down, and, in fact, what they’ve done is they’ve elevated the prize, the stature of the prize and the recipient of the prize by blocking the award. They have created in Liu Xiaobo an international figure of stature comparable to other of the more distinguished Peace prize winner of the past.

Mullins: Alright, there’s one who you knew in particular, because you were in Moscow at the time, working for the Washington Post in 1975 when a Russian physicist won the Nobel Peace prize. This is Andrei Sakharov. Tell us about him, and what happened in his case.

Osnos: Andrei Sakharov was the Soviet Union’s most important nuclear physicist. Let me say he was responsible for the development of the Soviet edge bomb, but over time, he also became its leading democratic activist, a dissident. And he was awarded the prize, and the Soviets simply would not give him a visa to leave the country. His wife, however, was in Italy, at that time, coincidently recovering from eye surgery. Which, the fact of the matter is, that the only reason she was in Italy was that there was an international campaign to allow her to go to Italy to get the eye surgery.

Mullins: This is Elena Bonner, his wife.

Osnos: Elena Bonner, who was herself a significant activist. So she spoke on behalf of Andrei Sakharov, and it was a wonderful, powerful speech which he had written and she delivered. On the day in which the award was presented, Sakharov was standing in front of a courtroom, where a friend of his was on trial for political activity; so, there was a kind of great symbolic value. A few weeks later, my wife and I invited the Sakharovs to dinner at our house, and they came, and we talked for the whole evening about, of course, Sakharov.

Mullins: What was the impact on him, on Sakharov? And what was the larger impact?

Osnos: The impact on Sakharov, personally, was the international recognition. You know, when you are a dissident in a place like the old Soviet Union or China, it’s very lonely. You really can’t appreciate what impact you could have. In 1975, if you had said to Andrei Sakharov, “in the next 15 years, this Soviet Union will disappear, and you, Andrei Sakharov, and your wife, Elena Bonner, will be significant political figures in a post-Soviet Russia,” they would’ve looked at you like you were crazy

Mullins: But let’s bring this now to China and Liu Xiaobo. The Soviet Union that you’re talking about back in 1975 through the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a decaying empire. That’s not the case with China; it is not imploding. It is growing- just the opposite, quite rapidly. So what is the possibility of any kind of similar outcome for Liu Xiaobo

Osnos: I think what this reflects, though, is a kind of continuing insecurity that the Chinese feel with their own stature. A society that, I would say, was self-assured, would not go to the tremendous lengths that the Chinese have gone to block this award. And what we’re seeing in China, as they struggle – as the Chinese leadership and the Chinese people struggle – to figure out what their true role will be, not only in the world but how they will conduct themselves at home. You know, very few of China’s (what is it?) 1.4 billion people have ever heard of Liu Xiaobo. In the Soviet Union, Andrei Sakharov wasn’t all that well known. But once somebody receives an award of this kind, and there’s an international uproar in one way or another, it elevates the personality simply by the visibility. I think, over the years, the Chinese are gonna have to grapple with the fact that there are people of significance within their own borders who will challenge the government. And how they proceed to deal with that is really gonna be a major test of China’s true authority in the world, China’s true role in the world, and the way the rest of the world perceives China.

Mullins: Well, thank you very much. Peter Osnos, who was a foreign correspondent. He is also, among other things, the founder and editor-at-large of Public Affairs, the book publisher in New York, and he is now correspondent for the Atlantic.com. Very nice to have you in the program.

Osnos: Thank you.

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Lisa Mullins: We’ve known for more than a month who has won this years’s Nobel Peace Prize. He’s the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. What we don’t know is who if anyone will accept the award on December 10th. It almost certainly won’t be Liu Xiaobo himself. He’s serving an 11 year sentence for subversion. The renowned human rights lawyer, Mo Shaoping’s firm is representing Liu and it now appears the lawyer won’t be allowed to accept the award on Liu’s behalf. China prevented the lawyer from leaving the country today. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing says it is an interesting development.

Mary Kay Magistad: It’s interesting because usually although he’s had a number of cases that are pro-democracy related, or related to dissidents within China, he’s always managed to skate close to the line but not over it and has managed to have a constructive relationship with Chinese authorities. This time though, Chinese authorities seem genuinely angry and wounded about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo and they seem to be wanting to block anyone who’s close to him who might be able to go overseas and speak out about the award from doing so.

Mullins: Can you tell us also why the Chinese government is speaking out the Nobel Prize winner’s wife?

Magistad: Well, today at the scheduled Chinese foreign ministry press briefing, The foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu was asked whether Liu Xiaobo’s wife will be allowed to go the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on December 8th and  he got rather stroppy and he said “Well, on what grounds are you asking this question? How do you know she intends to go?” and the reporter responded that in fact she’d been invited and he said ”Well, then you should ask her.” But it would be hard to ask Liu Xia whether she’s actually going to go because she’s under house arrest and her mobile phone access has been cut off and he knows that full well.

Mullins: Is there any chance that the Chinese government would not allow the Nobel Prize winner’s wife to actually go to the ceremony?

Magistad: There’s every chance they are not going to allow Liu Xia to go to the ceremony. Because of that, she has openly invited 143 celebrities, activists of various types to the ceremony. Something that the Nobel committee has responded to by saying “That’s quite a few more than are normally invited. I think she fully expects that quite a few of those invited will not be allowed to go either.”

Mullins: You know it sounds clearly as if they’re maximizing the opportunity to spotlight the actions of the Chinese government here. Could you remind us why Chinese authorities are so angry over this Nobel Prize going to a Chinese activist?

Magistad: They feel it’s interference in China’s internal affairs and frankly they don’t like to be criticized. They feel they’re governing China in the right way and if people criticize them and suggest that the system within China, the political system, should be different than it is, they have the right to shut that person down. That’s what they did with Liu Xiaobo. He had come up with something called “Charter 08”which called for multi-party democracy in China and for the Chinese government to actually adhere to the rights that are allowed within the Chinese constitution. That charter got almost 10,000 signatures before the Chinese government was able to block it online and then eventually arrested Liu Xiaobo.

Mullins: And authorities in the beginning didn’t want the Chinese people to know that one of their own who’s serving an 11 year sentence in prison has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. How well are Chinese authorities doing at suppressing the news?

Magistad: Pretty well in terms of the mainstream media but it’s trickling out on the internet. I was just in a cab a couple of days ago with a fifty-something year old cab driver who started talking to me about Liu Xiaobo. He’d heard about him, he was interested in him and admired him and thought that this was a very good thing that he’d been awarded this prize.

Mullins: Well, so the word is getting out among the Chinese people. Internationally of course, a lot of eyes are on China and I imagine they’re going to be especially in the run up to the G20 and the Asia Pacific Summits going on this week.

Magistad: Well, indeed and in fact this week, there was a letter released written by 15 Nobel Peace Prize laureates including Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa calling for the release of Liu Xiaobo. China has already been feeling a bit like it’s been ganged up on in international meetings of late and certainly has been looking with a lack of happiness at President Obabma’s visit to India where President Obama made a point of saying India is an extremely important rising Asian nation, it’s rise in this century is one of the great stories of the century. These are things that used to be said and are still being said about China, but it was almost a nudge saying “Look China, You’re not the only rising economic power with more than a billion people. There are others who are also important to us.”And the fact that President Obama in this Asian swing is going to India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan but not China sends a sort of a signal. The Chinese have already kind of made it clear that they have been uncomfortable with the way that international meetings have gone in recent weeks where the U.S. has for instance offered to help Southeast Asian countries in their negotiations with China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The Chinese like to divide and rule on this issue. They like to be able to do bilateral negotiations with each country and since they are the bigger party, they always win. The fact that the U.S. is becoming more active in the region is something that China is not happy about and the idea that this issue might come up at the G20 within this new dynamic is something that China is also really not very happy about.

Mullins: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad  in Beijing. Mary, thank you as always.

Magistad: Thank you Lisa

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• BBC: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to China dissident Liu Xiaobo
• Profile: Liu Xiaobo: 20 years of activism

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

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.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: Chinese novelist, Diane Wei-Liang has something in common with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. She herself is a veteran of China’s pro-democracy movement. And like Liu Xiaobo, she took part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Diane Wei-Liang now lives in London. She worries that the award will make life harder for Mr. Liu.

DIANE WEI-LIANG:  He probably won’t receive even harsher treatment from the government, but on the other hand, in the long run I think this award should open the debate in China about political reform and freedom of speech, which [INDISCERNIBLE] desperately needed.

MULLINS:  It sounds like you’ve got mixed reactions about him getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

WEI-LIANG: In some ways this is a dilemma for human rights organizations around the world. However, one cannot stand around doing nothing. It’s a difficult call, but I think the prize today has signaled the willingness of the international community to address this issue and to also urge China to address this issue.

MULLINS: You indicated your concerns that Liu might suffer some negative repercussions as a result of receiving this Peace Prize. Can you be more specific about those concerns? Are you worried that he might get his jail time extended?

WEI-LIANG: That’s a possibility. Although he has been sentenced in the court of law to eleven years. If you look at the response from the Chinese government, the response to the prize has been strong and negative. And I think that that would be the stand that the government will talk and they will want to show their determination in pursuing this case from their point of view.

MULLINS: As you say, the world has to say something and the award is one way to put pressure on China to do more to improve human rights there. What do you think are some other strategies that human rights activists might think about?

WEI-LIANG: Speaking from personal experience as a novelist, to promote the writing of writers whose lives are in danger in their own country is a great way of promoting their freedom. If they could gain international attention for their writing and they will be protected because of that. And Mr. Liu Xiaobo himself is a writer.

MULLINS: The Nobel Peace Prize is such a part of our culture in the West. What does it mean in China? Does it mean anything?

WEI-LIANG: Absolutely. And in fact there are two Chinese citizens have won. Nobel Prize is, one is for literature and now for the Peace Prize. And I think it means a great deal to the Chinese and I think this prize today means a lot to Mr. Liu Xiaobo and the ideals that he represents.

MULLINS:  I’m curious to know what your first reaction was when you heard the news that Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize.

WEI-LIANG: I thought it was just fantastic. I thought it was a great prize to be given out to not only Mr. Liu himself, but to that group of voice within China that is not being heard. It’s a great recognition for their work.

MULLINS: Liu Xiaobo is one of China’s most high-profile dissidents. How would you rank this event of him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in terms of significance in the opening up of human rights in China?

WEI-LIANG: I think it’s symbolic. It brings the issue forward and to the front. Particularly at a time China’s economic development is getting a lot of attention from the rest of the world. And in that sense it’s very, very significant.

MULLINS: Novelist Diane Wei-Liang. Her memoir about life growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution and her participation in the Tiananmen Square protests is called Lake With No Name. She joined us from London. Thank you very much Diane.

WEI-LIANG: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Adam Jacot de Boinod is a seeker of obscure but colorful English expressions. It all began when he was working for a BBC program called QI with Stephen Fry. He was asked to find interesting words beginning with an A. So he picked up an Albanian-English dictionary and found 27 words for moustache and 27 words for eyebrow. That research eventually spawned two books, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo. The two books list foreign words and phrases for which there are no direct translations, and they are favorites of this podcast, especially as source material for the Eating Sideways segment. Of course, books that list words for which there are no English equivalents would seem to suggest that English has some deficiencies. And it does, but it also has more than its fair share of wonderfully inventive, if obscure, expressions. That’s where de Boinod’s new book, The Wonder of Whiffling, comes in. Read it, and you’ll know whether you prefer to muppet shuffle or dwile flunk. You’ll know if you are a pozzy-wallah. Some of expressions are brand new, others long gone. Some are from Britain, but many hail from former colonial outposts where English is re-invented with the help of local languages and customs. It’s almost impossible to choose a favorite, so I’ll pick three:

Charientism (c.1589): an insult so gracefully veiled as to seem unintended.

Bend-down plaza (Jamaican English): a row of roadside peddlers, specializing in items that are hard to get in stores, because of import restrictions.

Dulosis (Greek) : the enslavement of ants by ants.

Also in this week’s pod, the meaning of the word peace. Barack Obama is the latest public figure to tweak its definition when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize and made the case for “just war”. His arguments weren’t especially new. But in making them as he collected the world’s foremost peace prize, Obama forced us to question our our settled sense of what peace is. He invited us to re-imagine it — or at least as it presents itself in the 21st century — as something that might be achieved only after vanquishing those who oppose peace. Before Obama got to talking about just wars, he acknowledged that he was no Gandhi or King . But he also pointed out that those figures were not heads of state when they espoused their theories of non-violence. Did Obama’s speech echo Psalm 85 and the painting on the left, the Kiss of Justice and Peace? (photo: Giovanni Dall’Orto) Or did it re-cast peace as the bastard offspring of war and justice? After we hear from Obama in the podcast, The World’s Alex Gallafent takes us through several alternative definitions of peace.

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