Taiwan-based Chinese dissident to attend Nobel laureates summit

Thu, 28 Oct 2010

Taipei - A Taiwan-based Chinese dissident said Thursday that he would attend an upcoming Nobel Peace Prize laureates summit in Japan after being invited as a friend of the prize's most recent recipient, Liu Xiaobo, who is jailed in China and unable to attend.

The organizer of the annual World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates also said Wuer Kaixi would address next month's summit and call for Liu's immediate release.

"By inviting Wuer Kaixi, the summit is keeping up with its long tradition of inviting representatives of jailed or otherwise incapacitated Nobel peace laureates," the summit's secretariat in Rome said in a statement.

Wuer said in an e-mail sent to the German Press Agency dpa that he was invited as a friend and student of Liu's to the November 12-14 summit in Hiroshima. Like Liu, he was also a protester at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 calling for democratic reforms. Troops using tanks and live ammunition crushed that demonstration.

"As far as I know, I am the only Chinese dissident who is invited although the summit is still trying very hard to contact and invite Mrs Liu," he said, referring to Liu Xia, whom Chinese authorities have put under house arrest since October 8, the day her husband's Nobel prize was announced.

The latest prison sentence for Liu Xiaobo, 54, a prominent writer and one of China's leading dissidents, was handed down in December when he was given 11 years in prison for his part in writing Charter '08, a petition calling for political reform and democratization in China.

China's ruling Communist Party's reaction to Liu's Nobel has been anger, and police have kept many other activists under house arrest or other forms of detention this month to prevent them from publicly celebrating.

Wuer, 42, was named number two on China's wanted list after the Tiananmen protests. First, he fled to France and later went to study in the United States.

He settled in Taiwan in 1994 after marrying a Taiwan student he met in the US. He is now the Taiwan managing partner of an international financial investment company.

Meanwhile, Liu Xia was looking for someone to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize on Liu Xiaobo's behalf.

In an open letter published last week, she said she and her husband wanted to invite about 140 friends in China and abroad who are also activists to attend the Nobel award ceremony December 10 and "share the honor" of Liu winning the prize.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/350783,attend-nobel-laureates-summit.html.