Originally published by AFP, 04 Oct 2010

  BEIJING – China’s activist community on Monday said they held little hope that jailed political dissident Liu Xiaobo could be named this week as the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Liu, a 54-year-old writer, was jailed for 11 years in December on subversion charges after co-authoring a bold call for democratic reform and is tipped as a favourite for the prize, the winner of which will be announced on Friday.

“Personally I don’t think he will get the prize,” his wife Liu Xia told AFP.

“If he wins, of course it will be a big help to (further) his hopes (of greater democracy and human rights in China). I just have a feeling that he won’t get it.”

In recent years Chinese dissidents have routinely been named as top candidates for the prestigious prize but have not won, activists said.

In 1989, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama – who is seen by Beijing as a “splittist” despite his repeated calls for autonomy rather than independence for Tibet – was given the honour.

Liu’s jailing followed the 2008 release of “Charter 08”, a manifesto for reform signed by more than 300 Chinese intellectuals, academics and writers, and thousands of others after it was circulated on the Internet.

The sentence handed down to the activist and former professor, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement who has been repeatedly jailed over the years, sparked international condemnation.

Online betting website paddypower.com has made Liu the favourite to win the Peace Prize, with odds of 3 to 1.

Liu Xia, whose home has been under police surveillance since her husband’s sentencing, cited China’s pressure on the Nobel Committee earlier this year not to award the prize to a Chinese dissident as part of her pessimism.

The director of the Nobel Institute and secretary of the Nobel committee, Geir Lundestad, told AFP last week that Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying had issued a warning against awarding the prize to Liu in a meeting in June.

Other activists and rights defenders also expressed doubts that the prize would be awarded to a Chinese national, citing a series of disappointments in the past.

“I think it will be the same as before,” leading human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping told AFP.

He cited previous candidates from China such as dissidents Wei Jingsheng, Xu Wenli and Hu Jia, as well as the Tiananmen Mothers – a group of relatives of victims of the bloody quelling of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

A few nonetheless held out hope.

“For over 20 years, since 1989, China’s civil society has gone through some big changes, while Chinese activists and rights defenders have paid a big price for advancing democracy and the rule of law,” rights lawyer Li Fanping told AFP.

“Despite these big changes, Chinese society is still at a critical period, so as China’s civil society expands and the international community shows more concern, I hope that this year’s Nobel Prize will go to a Chinese activist.”

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