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Nobel Peace Prize

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The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 - Presentation Speech. Presentation Speech by Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo, 10 December 2010. Your Majesties, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace. Such rights are a prerequisite for the "fraternity between nations" of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will. " This was the first paragraph of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement on the 8th of October of the award of this year’s Peace Prize.

We regret that the Laureate is not present here today. This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate. There have been a number of previous occasions when the Laureate has been prevented from attending. In 2003, Shirin Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize. They did so for others. The Nobel Prize Concert 2010. Leading article: Eloquence of the empty chair - Leading Articles, Opinion. First, despite its huge advances and ever-growing integration into the global economy, China operates on a very different set of values from our own. And second, for all its successes at home and abroad, the opaque and authoritarian regime in Beijing sees Liu Xiaobo and the values he represents as a threat to its continuing hold on power.

The closest recent parallel to Mr Liu was Andrei Sakharov, who won the peace prize in 1975. The Kremlin was similarly outraged by Western "interference" in the Soviet Union's domestic affairs. But though it barred Mr Sakharov from accepting in person, it did allow his wife to do so on his behalf.

China, by contrast, has imposed a domestic blackout – insofar as is possible in this ultra-connected age – and prevented anyone remotely connected with Mr Liu from travelling to Oslo. Yes, the real Nobel peace prize has been politicised, and its committee sees events from a thoroughly European and social democratic vantage point. Rev. Chuck Freeman: Elijah's Empty Chair of Freedom in Oslo. A Jewish elder speaks during the Passover seder: "At each table there is an empty chair, an extra cup of juice, and one remaining piece of matzoh.

Jewish history tells of a beloved prophet by the name of Elijah, who appears in times of trouble to bring promise of relief, to lift downcast spirits, and to plant hope in the hearts of the downtrodden. The injustice of this world still brings to mind Elijah who, in defense of justice, challenged power. " Friday in Oslo, Norway Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was represented at the award ceremony by an empty chair. Xiaobo was unable to be in Oslo to collect his gold medal and his $1.4 million prize. His wife has been under house arrest since her husband's prize was announced. Since nobody can collect the prize, the Nobel committee has decided to put an empty chair on the podium, with a portrait photograph of Liu Xiaobo behind it. Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Peace Prize Committee said on Thursday, Nobel de la paix : écran noir dans les médias chinois.

Thor Halvorssen: Human Rights Is Big Winner in Nobel Peace Prize Selection. By Thor Halvorssen OSLO, Norway -- Liu Xiaobo could not be more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. An eloquent writer and passionate human rights defender, he was chosen by the Nobel Committee for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. " His embattled commitment to freedom embodies the ongoing movement against Chinese tyranny. Imprisoned since December of 2008, Liu's crime was to organize the Charter 08 document -- a manifesto signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals and activists that petitioned Beijing for greater freedom and human rights. Through Charter 08 Liu demanded freedom of expression, free and fair elections, freedom of association, an independent judiciary, freedom of religion, and other fundamental human rights for the Chinese people.

Liu's heroism is all the more extraordinary as he knew what the Communist Party's reaction would be from personal experience. A chair and a photo stand in for Liu Xiaobo at Nobel peace prize ceremony | World news. It was not a special chair. Like the six others next to it on the dais in the cavernous central assembly room of Oslo's city hall, its frame was of plain varnished hardwood and its fabric of powder blue, white cross-stitches picking out a delicate pattern of flowers and stars and, across the back, three swans flying against a snowy sky. Unlike its neighbours, though, which held the solid, smartly turned-out forms of the chairman and members of the Norwegian Nobel committee, it stayed empty. For the first time since 1936, the Nobel peace prize could not be presented today either to its laureate or, as the prize rules require, to a close relative.

"No medal or diploma will be presented today," the committee's chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, began, opening a simple ceremony of music and readings during which the 1,000-strong audience of diplomats, dissidents-in-exile and Norway's great and good several times climbed to their feet in prolonged applause.