Countries that have embassies in Oslo were invited to send representatives to the ceremony, but the Chinese government had aggressively called for a boycott. In the end, forty-five countries attended, but another nineteen—including Russia, Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Vietnam—chose to stay away.
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Neither China’s Liu Xiaobo nor his wife or family or friends will be in Oslo to receive his Peace Prize. Who will speak up for him?
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It has been a busy two weeks in China. Last week, my friend, the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” Then nearly two dozen Chinese Communist Party elders—some of them highly ranked officials or retired (read more…)
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On July 17, agents of Beijing’s Civil Affairs Bureau raided and closed the office of the Open Constitution Initiative, a local nongovernmental organization. This center had been the primary meeting place for China’s nascent movement of “rights lawyers,” in which I have been an active participant. There are not too (read more…)
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A hundred years after the writing of China’s first constitution, “Charter 08” called for an end to essential features of the country’s political system, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy.
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