Peter Osnos: How China Elevates the Nobel Peace Prize
[Peter Osnos is a journalist turned book editor/publisher. He spent 18 years working at various bureaus for The Washington Post before founding Public Affairs Books.]
The Nobel Peace Prize, unlike those, say, for medicine or chemistry, sometimes lands with a splat. There was Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who were awarded the medal in 1973 for bringing peace to Vietnam, which they did not. In 1994, the prize went to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords, which mainly opened a new era of Israeli-Palestinian frustration and conflict. And last year, the recipient was Barack Obama, which even from the president's perspective proved to be more a problem to be managed than an honor.
But this year's prize again has showed the impact a previously little-known activist can have in highlighting the human rights record of a great power. The winner is Liu Xiaobo, a dissident intellectual currently serving an eleven-year prison term for "subversion." In response to the honor, the Chinese have earned an ignominious distinction. They have successfully blocked the presentation of the award, the first time that this has happened since 1936, when the Nazis kept the pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from leaving the country (despite suffering with tuberculosis after being tortured in a concentration camp). Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo's wife, who by Nobel committee protocol could collect the medal on his behalf, is under house detention, and according to the London Times, her telephone and Internet connections have been blocked. "She has not been allowed outside for almost a month," the paper reported....
The Chinese have denied Liu Xiaobo the right even to acknowledge the prize. Both he and his wife have been cut off completely, and that is unique in Nobel history. China's silencing of a Nobel recipient surpasses the Soviet stance at the pinnacle of their power, when the award in 1975 went to Andrei Sakharov, another case of a troublesome political dissident, admired by those in the world who had heard of him, but considered a threat to the leadership. Sakharov, a great physicist and leader of a small group of Soviet democratic activists was refused a travel visa on the grounds that he might use the trip to unload Soviet military secrets. Sakharov's wife, Elena Bonner, accepted the award for him. She had been in Italy recovering from eye surgery (getting her visa for medical treatment abroad had required an international campaign)....
Read entire article at The Atlantic
The Nobel Peace Prize, unlike those, say, for medicine or chemistry, sometimes lands with a splat. There was Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who were awarded the medal in 1973 for bringing peace to Vietnam, which they did not. In 1994, the prize went to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords, which mainly opened a new era of Israeli-Palestinian frustration and conflict. And last year, the recipient was Barack Obama, which even from the president's perspective proved to be more a problem to be managed than an honor.
But this year's prize again has showed the impact a previously little-known activist can have in highlighting the human rights record of a great power. The winner is Liu Xiaobo, a dissident intellectual currently serving an eleven-year prison term for "subversion." In response to the honor, the Chinese have earned an ignominious distinction. They have successfully blocked the presentation of the award, the first time that this has happened since 1936, when the Nazis kept the pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from leaving the country (despite suffering with tuberculosis after being tortured in a concentration camp). Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo's wife, who by Nobel committee protocol could collect the medal on his behalf, is under house detention, and according to the London Times, her telephone and Internet connections have been blocked. "She has not been allowed outside for almost a month," the paper reported....
The Chinese have denied Liu Xiaobo the right even to acknowledge the prize. Both he and his wife have been cut off completely, and that is unique in Nobel history. China's silencing of a Nobel recipient surpasses the Soviet stance at the pinnacle of their power, when the award in 1975 went to Andrei Sakharov, another case of a troublesome political dissident, admired by those in the world who had heard of him, but considered a threat to the leadership. Sakharov, a great physicist and leader of a small group of Soviet democratic activists was refused a travel visa on the grounds that he might use the trip to unload Soviet military secrets. Sakharov's wife, Elena Bonner, accepted the award for him. She had been in Italy recovering from eye surgery (getting her visa for medical treatment abroad had required an international campaign)....