OSLO: Supporters and opponents of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo were mobilizing Thursday on the eve of a ceremony in honor of the absent Nobel Peace Prize laureate that has enraged Beijing.
China has kept up a barrage of criticism of the award to Liu who will be unable to attend the ceremony, insisting that the vast majority of countries oppose the decision to hand the prize to a man it considers a criminal.
"Those people at the Nobel committee have to admit they are in the minority. The Chinese people and the overwhelming majority of people in the world oppose what they do," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.
However the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, said Thursday he was pleasantly surprised to see the level of support for the award and "how many international leaders have so strenuously demanded Liu’s release."
Liu, 54, was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a bold petition calling for reform in one-party Communist-ruled China.
Jagland acknowledged that he and the rest of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee had not been "expecting a lot of support at a political level since so many countries depend on China economically and politically."
"It is most certainly not very easy for (some) countries to oppose China’s wishes. But the most important thing, is that two thirds of the countries with an embassy in Oslo will come (to Friday’s ceremony), including large countries with close relations to China."
China has threatened "consequences" for countries that show their support for Liu, but according to the Nobel Institute, 44 embassies have accepted invitations to the event.
Besides China, 19 other countries have declined to attend the ceremony in the Oslo city hall: Afghanistan Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam.
China fired a final salvo ahead of the ceremony on Thursday calling US lawmakers "arrogant" for a House of Representatives vote congratulating Liu on the award and calling for his immediate release.
Amnesty International was meanwhile planning a demonstration in front of the Chinese embassy Thursday when protesters will attempt to hand over a petition in support of Liu.
Several hours before the protest, the head Amnesty’s Norway chapter, John Peder Egenaes told AFP around 100,000 people, mainly from Europe and the United States, had signed the petition.
The human rights group and the Nobel Institute have both meanwhile charged that Beijing was pressuring people of Chinese origin living in Oslo to protest against Liu.
"We know that the Chinese embassy has taken the initiative to organize counter-demonstrations and that it is putting pressure on the Chinese living in Oslo to participate," Egenaes said.
Neither Liu nor his wife, Liu Xia, who has been placed under house arrest since the prize was announced on October 8, will attend the ceremony.
Friday will thus mark only the second time in the more than 100-year history of the prize that neither the laureate nor a representative will be able to come accept the award.
The only other time was when German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who was locked up in a Nazi concentration camp, could not travel to Oslo for his prize ceremony in 1936.
