Nobel prize for dissident is like encouraging crime: China

BEIJING - China Thursday upped its hostile rhetoric against the Nobel Peace Prize for jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, saying it was “equivalent to encouraging crime”.

“Liu Xiaobo is a convicted criminal who has violated China’s laws,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters.

“Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to such a criminal is equivalent to encouraging crime within China and also an infringement of China’s judicial sovereignty,” Ma said.

“When politicians and the governments of some countries support awarding the prize to Liu Xiaobo, I wonder what their true intention is. Is it because they dislike China’s development path and political system?

“The biased people selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee have no right to accuse (China) and other countries’ governments have no right to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” Ma said.

China has cancelled at least four official functions with Norway in apparent anger over last week’s award of the Nobel to Liu, the Norwegian foreign ministry said.

On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan was the latest foreign politician to urge Chian to release Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion for his part in issuing the Charter ‘08 for democratic reform.

Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, has remained under house arrest in Beijing since police brought her back Sunday from the northeastern city of Jinzhou, where her husband is serving his sentence.

Her mobile phone number and a replacement one were both cut off by the authorities, and her lawyers have been unable to contact her for at least two days.

On Wednesday via her Twitter account, Liu Xia protested the “illegal house arrest” and said police had prevented a Norwegian diplomat from meeting her.

She used Twitter again Thursday but said little about her situation, only urging people to support two friends and fellow activists who have been out of contact since Friday.

“The two teachers Ding Zilin and Jiang Peikun have also disappeared. Please show concern,” Liu Xia wrote.

She was referring to an elderly couple who are leading members of the Tiananmen Mothers group, which has appealed dozens of times for the Communist Party to hold a public inquiry into the brutal 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Ding and Jiang’s 17-year-old son was killed in the 1989 crackdown.

Liu Xiaobo, a prominent writer and one of China’s leading dissidents, was arrested in December 2008 for his part in writing Charter ‘08.

State media have reported little more than the foreign ministry’s earlier criticism of the award as “serious disrespect”.

It has kept many other dissidents and rights activists under house arrest or other forms of detention since Friday to prevent them from publicly celebrating the award.