Aung San Suu Kyi: A Prisoner No More

"The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart." ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Sometimes the arc of the moral universe, as MLK once said, seems to bend toward justice. Today, Aung San Suu Kyi received her Nobel Peace Prize twenty-one years after she'd won it. It's good for the soul and the future to pause and relish a victory of this magnitude. But as Suu Kyi cautioned, now isn't the time for "reckless optimism."
 

Yuko and I visited Burma in 2008, a year after the anti-government "saffron revolution" brought thousands of people into the streets. We traveled to Inle, Mandalay, Bagan and Rangoon. Despite the danger, everyone who spoke to us expressed unconditional support for Suu Kyi. She carries with her the aspirations of her people.

(Kids smothered with thanaka cream playing hide and seek @ Inle, via Yewco)

Suu Kyi was living under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years until she was finally released in November 2010. Her crime? Defeating the junta in the 1990 elections. Her Nobel speech, delivered in Oslo, Norway, is a moving testament to the essential goodness of humanity despite the brute injustice she and Burma have lived through:

"Before continuing to speak of my country, may I speak out for our prisoners of conscience. There still remain such prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten. I am standing here because I was once a prisoner of conscience. As you look at me and listen to me, please remember the often repeated truth that one prisoner of conscience is one too many. Those who have not yet been freed, those who have not yet been given access to the benefits of justice in my country number much more than one. Please remember them and do whatever is possible to effect their earliest, unconditional release."

Liu Xiaobo: A True "Chairman"

"Lui Xiaobo today has become a true 'chairman'" - anonymous internet post

Attempts by China to demonize and discredit the Nobel Peace Prize and its committee have backfired gloriously, reaching absurd levels of guano. Not only has a simple image of an empty chair aroused fear and panic in the authorities, but television screens turn black whenever the name everyone knows is mentioned. As the New Yorker's Evan Osnos writes, "The Black screen is reserved for a specific kind of unknowing: the denial of something everyone knows."

Is this how a great power acts? It's more like the tantrums of a spoiled brat who expects the world to revolve around his own swollen head. China makes a fool of itself whenever it tries to employ the same tactics it uses domestically on the international community. Fellow citizens may kowtow to Beijing out of fear, but for the rest of the world China is anything but the so-called "Middle Kingdom" it views itself as.
As Lui Xiaobo wrote, "To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth." When China's rulers try to do this on an international level they distort the true nature of their country, so much so that China will now forever linger alongside Nazi Germany in the annals of Nobel lore. And for anyone who knows China and its people, that's just one more tragedy - albeit a self-inflicted one - caused by the true enemies of the people - unelected thugs like Hu Jintao.

China's Shame: The Nobel Boycott

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness"- Chinese proverb

On December 10th, International Human Rights Day, China will have made every effort to snuff out the light of our collective humanity. Rather than permit the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Liu Xiaobo, to attend the award ceremony in Oslo, authorities in Beijing have been pressuring countries to join them in a boycott. As of today, 18 have agreed - Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Add to that list of shame the U.N.'s top human rights official, Navi Pillay.

Outside The Chinese Liaison Office in Hong Kong

No one from Liu's family is expected to be on hand to accept the award. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest since he was named the winner in October and other family members are under pressure not to speak publicly. The last time no one was present to accept the peace medal was in 1936 when the German journalist and pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky, wasn't allowed to leave Nazi Germany. China now joins the odious ranks of the Nazis in attempting to snuff out human rights.

Many of Liu’s fellow dissidents and supporters have been warned not to attend or, as in the case of Ai Weiwei, have been physically prevented from leaving China. That hasn't stopped more than 40 exiled Chinese dissidents from traveling to the Norwegian capital in what will be an unprecedented reunion since many of them fled China 20 years ago. According to the South China Morning Post;

"Among the participants will be former Tiananmen pro-democracy activists now living in the United States, such as former student leaders Chai Ling and Feng Congde , as well as Fang Zheng , a former student whose legs were crushed by a tank as he fled Tiananmen Square in 1989. US-based astrophysicist Professor Fang Lizhi and Taiwan-based Wuer Kaixi will also attend.

Feng said the event would be the largest gathering of dissidents since the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and the honouring of Liu would be "extremely meaningful" for the Chinese democracy movement."

In response, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said;

“We are not changing because of interference by a few clowns and we will not change our path."

Indeed, clowns come in many different shapes and sizes....

The Fallout: China's Nobel Crackdown

"This award is for the lost souls of June 4th." - Liu Xiaobo via his wife, Liu Xia

The first to feel the fallout from Liu Xiaobo's Nobel win was Liu Xia, his wife. After the announcement was made she was placed under house arrest and had her mobile phone usage monitored and then restricted. She was eventually allowed to visit her husband, accompanied by some government thugs, and has been living under constant surveillance ever since. As she told the Guardian:

"They have told me not to go out, not to visit friends. If I want to see my parents or buy food, I can only go in their car. I don't even talk to my neighbours because I don't want to get them into trouble."

Yesterday, Beijing stopped a group of diplomats from visiting her. Simon Sharpe, first secretary of political affairs of the EU delegation, said he wanted to deliver a letter of congratulations from Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission.

Plain-clothes thugs keep watch where Liu Xia is being held. (via SCMP)

Sharpe was accompanied by diplomats from the embassies of Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy and Australia. (What about Canada? At least we issued a statement). But three guards at the gate of Liu's apartment complex prevented the group from entering. Now it appears she may not even be allowed to leave the country to collect the award:

"I can't even get out of my home, how could I go out of the country?"

This is how it's done in modern China - when all else fails, target the family. Then go after anyone remotely associated with the award, like other human rights advocates...and those damn Norwegians. China has called off a planned meeting with the Norwegian fisheries minister, blocked the Nobel peace prize website and promised further dire consequences. All this fuss because of an independent foreign committee made up of five members. As secretary of the Nobel committee, Geir Lundestad, said:

"We stand for a set of principles. A committee can't just overthrow a government. That is self-evident."

In China, that's not so - this "Gang of Five" is feared for precisely that reason.

Things have not fared well in Hong Kong either, despite our much vaunted "one country, two systems" principle. While celebrating Liu's win by drinking champagne and eating Norwegian salmon outside the central Chinese government's local liaison office, a woman was arrested for splashing an officer with some bubbly. I can't really blame the guy - he was probably feeling left out. Next time pass around some glasses.

Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波): China's Nobel Laureate!

Hong Kong is all abuzz over the announcement that Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." Rumours abounded, but few believed it would actually happen. Then a few weeks ago when the Chinese government warned the Nobel Committee not to give Liu the prize "because he had violated Chinese law" you could smell the fear rising off their scabby hides and it raised hopes around the world. It also likely encouraged the Norwegians to go right ahead and do what they dare not do.

Liu was sentenced for "subversion" and jailed for 11 years on Christmas Day 2009, a day chosen by the authorities because they hoped the West would be preoccupied with other matters. It had much to do with his leading role in promoting "Charter 08," a movement advocating human rights and democratic reforms in China. It was modeled on Soviet-era Czechoslovakia's "Charter 77" in which Václav Havel took part. Havel has been among those who have protested Liu's sentence.


This is absolutely glorious news. Anything that makes Beijing livid has to be celebrated and Hong Kong is the only place in China where a body can righteously scream it from the rooftops. And we will. Liu is now the first Chinese citizen to ever win a Nobel Peace prize. The Dalai Lama won in 1989, but is classified as a refugee and the 2000 winner, Gao Xingjian, won for literature and is a French citizen.

Obama's Nobel: A Call To Action

Que? How can this jive novice even qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize? What were they thinking??

Well, from outside the US it's easy to see; Obama has changed the world. Less than a year ago it was smothered in the clutches of a boffin-headed doughboy from Wyoming and an ignoramus whose only claim to leadership was his pedigree. Bush and Cheney pushed all of us to the abyss. From where I sit in Hong Kong, the rump of China, the world looks and feels a hell of a lot better than it did only 11 months ago. The fact is, Obama's tone and efforts to roll-back the reactionary, fear-based diplomacy and policies of the last 8 years are well worth recognizing with a Nobel.

Pundits are already doing everything they can to turn winning into losing and are undermining this achievement. They can't recognize the transformation because they're too busy reporting on death-panels and Iranian nukes to notice the ground beneath their puny feet has shifted. These jerks don't know what a good thing they've got.

Sure, Obama has given a lot of speeches, said a lot of words. But a speech is more than words when the most powerful man in the known universe delivers it. His speeches in Prague, Cairo, Accra, and in the United Nations Security Council were bold actions that cost him political points domestically (such is the pathetic state of affairs in the US). They moved people in ways that bombs, bullets or a dynasties will never. Obama has steered spaceship earth back on course. And that takes more than words - it takes action, it takes hope.

Andrew Sullivan has it right:

"I see this prize as an endorsement of his extraordinary reorientation of world politics, and as an encouragement to see it through. In the midst of our domestic battles, and their ill-temper (from which I have not been immune lately), this is an attempt to tell us: look up for a moment, see how far we've come in pivoting away from global conflict, and give this man a break for his efforts and the massive burden he now bears.

And, in the darkness that still threatens, know hope."