3059 Edition
October 11~17, 2010
Editorial
Editorial: Reflections on the Nobel Peace Prize
Translated by Lydia Ma
As the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 2008, somewhere in China, a group of human rights activists led by Liu Xiaobo unveiled China’s own version of a human rights declaration which has now become known to the world as Charter 08.
Charter 08 makes a point in criticizing the “New” China founded in 1949 which bears the words “People’s Republic” in theory, but actually operates as a de facto autocratic, one-party system. It goes on to call for sweeping changes to China’s political system, including a democratic legislature and an independent judiciary, to protect basic human rights and dignity.
Soon after Chinese authorities got wind of Charter 08, Liu, now a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was arrested on the charges of “suspicion of inciting subversion to state power,” and later sentenced to 11 years in prison. Many human rights groups have since appealed to Beijing for his release.
Unfortunately, as the world reached out to Liu Xiaobo, the Ma administration in Taiwan was dead silent. A quick glance at the clauses contained in Charter 08 reveals it’s an extremely ordinary document – at least from a mature democracy’s point of view. Its ordinariness is precisely the reason we cannot fathom the Ma administration having a hard time speaking out on Liu’s behalf. We shudder to think that all those China-leaning policies served more than purely economic goals after all – lest it be true that our government’s attempts to be in step with Beijing ultimately narrows down to being one in autocracy.
To those people out there who still think they can change or liberalize China’s political system through liberalizing its economy, we suggest they think again. China seems to have taken a page from Myanmar by arresting and imprisoning its own Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Not only has Beijing declared Liu Xiaobo a criminal, but it has also accused those who awarded him such a prestigious prize as accomplices. It criticized the selection committee of cheapening the Nobel Peace Prize by awarding it to Liu and even protested its decision to Norway’s foreign ambassador to China.
Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize because of his vision that love and non-violence could trump everything. Just before he was imprisoned last year, he remarked, “Hate will only cloud a person’s judgment and goodness. The enemy wants a nation to go to war with itself and destroy all traces of compassion and humanity and obstruct that nation’s path to democracy. I want to overcome these and I want to respond to a government’s enmity with goodness and love.”
It takes a lot of courage to choose love and non-violent reform, but the results are beautiful and well worth all efforts. Jesus himself taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. So, let’s try our best even though doing so may sound utterly incomprehensible.
Starting today, let’s start offering prayers of blessing for our government leaders and pray they will clothe themselves with justice, compassion, and kindness, and have contrite and introspective hearts.
