LIU XIA, the wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, went to see her husband in jail in Liaoning in northeastern China yesterday, but it was not clear if she was allowed to see him to tell him he had won the award.
Calls to her mobile phone went unanswered and it subsequently emerged that the Chinese government is detaining Ms Liu at her Beijing apartment. She has not been charged with a crime, but is no longer allowed to leave her home. Friends and media are not allowed to enter her apartment. and she is also no longer allowed to use her mobile phone.
The detention has added to the general confusion about the award, which has angered the Chinese government.
The 54-year-old literary critic and Nobel laureate is in the second year of an 11-year prison term for subversion, and news of the award has been kept low-key in the mainstream Chinese media, although the Global Times newspaper launched a broadside against the Oslo committee in an editorial.
“The Nobel committee once again displayed its arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made the most remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades,” the editorial ran. “The committee continues to deny China’s development by making paranoid choices. In 1989, the Dalai Lama, a separatist, won the prize. Liu Xiaobo, the new winner, wants to copy Western political systems in China. They are trying to impose Western values on China . . . China’s success story speaks louder than the Nobel Peace Prize.”
The reaction among the global community of Chinese dissidents has been mixed. While many have been jailed and exiled, they tend to differ in their views about how democratic change should happen in China. Wang Dan, one of the most prominent leaders of the student protests that ended in the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, said the decision reflected a change in the international community’s tactics when it comes to human rights in China.
“In the past it was appeasement. Now it’s changing to an active application of pressure. This is a good trend,” he told media in Taiwan, where he lives.
Wei Jingsheng, who spent nearly 20 years in prison in China, said others deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more than Mr Liu, and called him a moderate too willing to work with Beijing. “In my observation, the Nobel Peace Prize is going to Liu because he is different from the majority of people in opposition. He made more gestures of co-operation with the government and made more criticism of other resisters who suffered,” said Mr Wei, who lives in exile in Washington.
Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou, who has worked to forge closer links with China, welcomed the award. He said giving Mr Liu the award was “not only a special honour for Liu personally, but also carries significant historical meaning for the development of human rights in mainland China, as well as for Chinese society all over the world.”
In Beijing, many felt attacked by the Nobel decision. “I don’t understand why the Nobel prize should be awarded to him just because he attacked his own country and own government, or because he is in jail,” said Lin Dan (42). “This is about putting pressure on the Chinese government.”
A university professor who did not wish to be named said: “I don’t think this prize is proper and I don’t support it . . . Every country has its own law and a criminal under Chinese law won the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s ironic. China is so complicated . . . we can also see the effort the government is making in recent years, that at least they are trying to do things better.”
A 31-year-old woman who also didn’t want to be named said she felt sympathy for Mr Liu because of the way his imprisonment had disrupted his family. “I’m willing to believe that he is trying to do something good, although his way of doing it is a little bit ‘too-left’. I would appreciate him a lot if we both lived in the 1960s, but now, I’m also a bit suspicious of his work . . . I can criticise from inside, but I still want to protect China from the outside like a son wants to protect his mother.
“Even if you know your mom is ugly, you are still unhappy when you hear others say it to you, and what you want to do is to protect her and change her, not insult her in front of others.”