OSLO, Norway — The Nobel Peace Prize may not be handed out this year because China is not likely to let anyone from imprisoned award-winner Liu Xiaobo’s family attend the ceremony, a Nobel official said, calling China’s diplomatic pressure this year unprecedented.
Outraged by the award, Beijing has reportedly clamped down on Liu’s relatives and pressured other countries not to send representatives to the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Oslo.
Ambassadors from Russia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Iraq have all declined invitations to the ceremony but didn’t specify the reasons, Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee told The Associated Press on Thursday.
“For an embassy to actively try to persuade other embassies to not participate in the ceremony is something new,” Lundestad said.
The prestigious $1.4 million award can be collected only by the laureate or close family members.
Liu, a Chinese dissident, is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion after co-authoring an appeal calling for reforms to China’s one-party political system. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest and subject to police escort since the award was announced last month.
Lundestad said the committee has not lost hope that someone from Liu’s family can attend the ceremony.
“If someone shows up at the last minute, it will not be a problem to change plans,” he said.
Liu Xiaobo has three brothers, but all of Liu’s closest family members are under tight police surveillance aimed at preventing them from attending the ceremony, friends say. Besides the award ceremony, the peace prize program includes a banquet on Dec. 10 and a concert held in the laureate’s honor the next day.
Organizers said the concert will be co-hosted by actors Anne Hathaway and Denzel Washington and will feature performances by Barry Manilow, Jamiroquai, A.R. Rahman and Elvis Costello, among others.
