When President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, there was a lot of criticism. While Barack Obama’s intentions seemed great – many said he hadn’t actually done anything. Not so for this year’s winner. Financial Times Deutschland columnist David Bocking writes that this time around, the Nobel Committee awarded a man that has risked everything – including his life – to promote freedom and democracy in China.
From the Financial Times Deutschland, columnist David Bocking writes in part:
In selecting Liu Xiabao, the Committee honors a man who has long confronted China’s communist leadership. This honor is a political signal, as it was last year when the award went to Barack Obama. But while the U.S. president was honored almost exclusively for intentions, Liu has paid a high personal price for his beliefs and actions for many years. In 1989 he was one of the leaders of the student protests at Tienanmen Square. Just five months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chinese citizens dared to criticize the lack of freedom in their country.
In contrast to the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany], protesters in China were literally mowed down by tanks. An unknown number of people died that day and there followed a wave of arrests in which Liu also fell victim. While East and West Germans were embracing each other, China’s political opposition feared for their lives. Of course, Oslo could also have honored the successful German revolution, in which case an East German civil rights activist would have deserved the prize at least as much as Helmut Kohl. But especially now, remembering the Chinese revolution sends a stronger signal.
In regard to whether the award shows ‘Western arrogance,’ Bocking writes:
Awarding Liu the Nobel Prize has nothing to do with Western arrogance. Politically, China remains a developing nation, a fact that was demonstrated most recently by Liu’s re-imprisonment at the end of last year. If Beijing – at events like the recent summit with E.U. nations, for example – seeks more recognition as an industrialized nation, then it must also submit to criticism of its domestic polices.
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