Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is tipped to win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, according to a leading bookmaker, a year after US President Barack Obama won amid criticisms.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 8 and a Reuters report quoted Vaclav Havel, a former Czech president and anti-communist dissident, as saying that the time was ripe for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to shine its powerful spotlight on China and give Liu what many consider the world’s top accolade.
A total of 237 names were submitted for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, 38 of which are organizations; it was the highest number of nominations that the Committee ever received for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committees in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and the Prize Committee for Economic Sciences each usually receives 250-300 names every year.
President Bharrat Jagdeo had been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of climate change. The names of the nominees cannot be revealed until 50 years later.
Liu, a poet and literature professor, is given 6-to-1 odds of winning the peace Nobel by bookmaker PaddyPower.com, according to Reuters.
He is currently serving an 11-year jail term for “inciting subversion of state power” — after signing a 2008 manifesto calling for democratic reform in China.
“…(Such a prize) would signal both to Liu and to the Chinese government that many inside China and around the world stand in solidarity with him, and his unwavering vision of freedom and human rights for the 1.3 billion people of China,” Havel and two former Czechoslovak dissidents wrote in an open letter.
Reuters also reported that China has warned Norway that relations would be at risk if the Committee gave the prize to a Chinese dissident.
Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.
