A PROMINENT rights lawyer, whose firm represents jailed Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, was stopped at Beijing airport yesterday as he tried to fly to Britain, because the Chinese government believed he was trying to attend the Oslo prize ceremony.
The news that Mo Shaoping and activist law professor He Weifang had been prevented from travelling – at about the same time as Britain’s prime minister David Cameron was arriving in Beijing leading a large trade delegation – comes amid a wider crackdown on government critics in the wake of the announcement of Mr Liu’s Nobel win on October 8th.
The Chinese leadership is furious and has denounced the Nobel committee, saying the prize was tantamount to “encouraging crime”. His wife Liu Xia has been placed under house arrest.
Since the prize, many activists and dissidents have been rounded up and taken into custody or placed under various restrictions.
Mr Liu (54) was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December on subversion charges after co-authoring the Charter 08 petition calling for political reform in China. It was widely circulated online and signed by thousands, including Mr Mo and Mr He.
Liu Xia recently issued an invitation to dozens of activists and prominent dissidents to attend the Oslo ceremony.
The prominent rights lawyer’s firm represented Mr Liu, but Mr Mo could not act for him directly because he was a co-signatory of the Charter 08 document.
“Two of my assistants represented me in court, but all the materials and statements are prepared by me,” he said.
Mr Mo and Mr He had intended to board a flight to take them to a panel discussion organised by the International Bar Association in London. They were told they were “threatening state security”.
Renee Xia, international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said in a statement: “The scope and intensity of this harassment indicates a high-level decision to take a hard-line approach in response to the Nobel committee’s choice.
“The ridiculous thing is that Mr He and I are going to the UK, and the UK is not a Schengen visa country, so that even though we have a British visa, we can’t go to another country in Europe, such as Norway,” said Mr Mo.
They were due to return to China next Monday.