As you may or may not know, this year's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese prisoner by the hand of the Chinese government. The charges against him: defying the Chinese governemnt. Of course, Liu cannot personally receive the award at the ceremony because he is in prison. The award was given to him, yes for his courage and personal sacrifice to achieve civil rights in China, but also as a statement condemning the actions of the Chinese government in regards to the treatment of its people and their restricted freedom.
Now, Beijing has lead a boycott against the ceremony and therefore the Chinese ambassador is not attending. In conjunction with China, 18 other countries will not be attending:
Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco.
Some, obviously, will not attend because of reasons of state, but looking at the list, you can probably tell which ones will not attend as a part of the boycott( the ones in bold are the ones I think are a part of this deplorable boycott).
No comments:
Post a Comment