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Chinese writer to attend the Nobel
ceremony: activists
AFP, BEIJING
A leading Chinese dissident writer will attend the Nobel ceremony in Norway, an
activist group said yesterday, despite a crackdown on supporters of this year¡¦s
jailed Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (¼B¾åªi).
Dai Qing (À¹´¸), a prominent journalist and environmental campaigner, said she
would attend if the Chinese government did not release Liu or allow others to go
on his behalf, environmental advocacy group Probe International said.
Dai is a fellow of the Toronto-based group and is currently in Canada on a
speaking tour, the group said in an e-mail to reporters.
Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December last year on subversion
charges after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China,
was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 8 ¡X enraging
China¡¦s rulers.
His wife, Liu Xia (¼BÁø), was immediately placed under house arrest. Unable to
freely leave her home, she issued an open letter last month inviting more than
100 of her husband¡¦s friends to go to receive the award on his behalf in Oslo on
Dec. 10.
Since the announcement of the prize, scores of dissidents, lawyers and
professors on that list have either been put under house arrest, or have come
under strict surveillance.
¡§If ... no one on Liu Xia¡¦s list is permitted to go abroad through the proper
procedures, it happens that I am in Canada now for an academic conference,¡¨ Dai,
who is also on the list, wrote on Probe International¡¦s Web site.
According to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and
Democracy, Liu¡¦s brothers ¡X who live in China ¡X are also willing to travel to
Norway to accept the prize despite concerns police will step up surveillance of
their movements.
Dai has long been an outspoken critic of the government and was herself jailed
after the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.
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