According to foreign news agencies’ reports from the People´s Republic of China, news of the award is almost non-existent in China’s media and has been blacked out from international news broadcasts on the BBC and CNN. 

No news about Nobel
Researchers at Hong Kong University’s the People´s Republic of China Media Project say the official Xinhua News Agency story on the Foreign Ministry response was not put on the front page of Xinhuanet, the news agency’s official website, and the news appeared at none of China’s major commercial Internet news portals.

Despite such efforts to suppress the news, social media websites and telephone texting have spread the story widely. This recalls a similar reaction in Tibet in March 2008, when activists and visitors used cell phones to spread images of civil unrest there, thwarting efforts by the Chinese government to suppress the news.

“China has not learned from past experience that blacking out news coverage of international events is a denial of reality that just does not work,” said Bob Dietz, Committee’s to Protect Journalists Asia program coordinator. “Today’s blackout has accomplished one thing only: reminding the world how far the People´s Republic of China will go to suppress the news. Chinese officials should not try to conceal from its own citizens what the entire world knows.”

In announcing the award, the Nobel Committee said, “The campaign to establish universal human rights also in the People´s Republic of China is being waged by many Chinese, both in the People´s Republic of China itself and abroad. Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in the People´s Republic of China.”

Chinese criticism
An English language statement from Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu posted on the ministry’s website responded: “This is an obscenity against the peace prize. Liu’s actions are diametrically opposed to the aims of the Nobel Prize. Nobel’s behest was that the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to somebody who promoted peace between peoples, promoted international friendship and disarmament.” The Chinese language version of the statement can be found here.

Liu Xiaobo, 54, a scholar and author. Liu was sentenced to an 11-year term on subversion charges on 25 December 2009. A longtime activist who had spent several years in prison during the 1990s, he was arrested in December 2008, the day before a manifesto he wrote with other dissidents and academics appeared on the Internet.

That manifesto, Charter ’08, demanded guarantees of civil liberties, judicial independence and the end to the Communist Party’s hold on state power. The Nobel committee cited Liu’s role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing and the Charter ’08 when it announced its award.

Liu’s final statement before being jailed, I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement, is available in English on the web site the People´s Republic of China Digital Times. The site also has a link to the original version in Chinese.

Wife detained?
As the Amnesty International Norway reports, when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, his wife, Liu Xia been cut off from the rest of the world.

Amid reports that she has been detained by police and forced to leave Beijing to visit her husband in Jinzhou in Liao Ning province, where he is imprisoned by the authorities, Catherine Baber Deputy Amnesty International deputy director of Asia Pacific said:

“The Chinese authorities may want to play down the international focus Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize has placed on the thousands of prisoners of conscience held in the People´s Republic of China, but the harassment of Liu Xia is certainly not the way to achieve this.  

“It is outrageous that Liu Xia be harassed just because her husband has received international recognition for his work for human rights. Her whereabouts must be disclosed immediately with confirmation that she remains a free citizen.

“The Chinese authorities would have far greater impact if they used this as an opportunity to release all those currently held in the People´s Republic of China for peacefully expressing their views and stopped harassing innocent citizens.”

HRH Bergen, based on Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International information. See the original articles here, here and here (in Norwegian).