China urges diplomats to skip Nobel ceremony for Chinese dissident

The notes from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to European ambassadors posted in Norway referred to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last month to imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo.

“We strongly hope that your country … will refrain from attending any activity directed against China,” read the notes, according to a diplomatic source who — like most people involved with the issue — did not wish to be quoted by name because of fear of Chinese retaliation.

Behind the stilted language, the meaning was clear: Beijing was lobbying European governments to not attend the Dec. 10 awards ceremony honoring Liu, a dissident whom Chinese officials have denounced as a criminal.

The awards ceremony in Oslo is a grand affair presided over by the king and queen of Norway and, according to diplomatic protocol, attended by ambassadors posted there.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the Chinese warnings sent Monday, some diplomats said the event could not be skipped.

“We always go. There is no reason not to,” said a European diplomat who also asked not to be quoted by name because of political sensitivities.

Without question, this year’s 54-year-old Nobel Peace Prize recipient cannot attend to accept the accolades or the accompanying $1.5-million prize. He remains incarcerated at Jinzhou Prison in northern China’s Liaoning province, serving an 11-year sentence for “incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” over Charter 08, a manifesto inspired by Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 that calls for political reform in China.

His wife, Liu Xia, is also unlikely to attend because she has been under house arrest since shortly after the award was announced Oct. 8. She has asked friends to attend on her husband’s behalf, but many of them — namely fellow activists — are also under house arrest or restricted in their movements.

In Guangzhou, in southern China, Guo Xianliang, a friend of Liu Xiaobo who had been handing out leaflets announcing the Nobel Prize news, was arrested in late October and also charged with incitement to subvert state power, activists said this week.

For Beijing, the Nobel Prize has been, in effect, a diplomatic litmus test, putting countries dependent on trade with China in an awkward position. In the last two weeks, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has called in Beijing-based diplomats to small lunches, advised them to not speak publicly about the prize and hinted that they should not attend the ceremony, according to a diplomatic source.

“The Chinese government is behaving like a spoiled brat. They threaten when cajoling doesn’t work, but it is going to have the opposite effect,” said Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, a rights organization, who is expected to attend the awards ceremony as a guest of Liu Xia. “So many governments lower their heads to China for economic reasons, but Chinese money cannot buy the silence of Western culture and civil society. That is the lesson of this Nobel Prize.”

Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in an interview with the Associated Press that more than 1,000 invitations had been sent out for the awards ceremony and that invitees included all Olso-based ambassadors, among them the Chinese ambassador. That invitation was returned unopened.

barbara.demick@latimes.com