Two US lawmakers on Thursday nominated Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a former Hong Kong publisher now standing trial on national security charges, and three other jailed dissidents for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, US Representative Chris Smith and US Senator Jeffrey Merkley, cochairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, nominated Lai, along with Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, and rights advocates Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) and Xu Zhiyong (許志永).
All four are jailed for their work.
Photo: AFP
“All these individuals embody the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize and justly deserve the award,” Smith and Merkley wrote. “The Peace Prize will focus world attention on all those struggling to exercise their fundamental human rights in the People’s Republic of China.”
Last week, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Office at Geneva Chen Xu (陳旭) said during a UN-backed review of the country’s human rights record that China “upholds respect for and protection of human rights as a task of importance in state governance.”
“We have embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China’s national conditions and so-called historic achievements in this process,” Chen said.
During the review, Western governments and rights groups criticized Beijing’s rights records and urged the Chinese government to stop criminalizing peaceful expression.
They called for Lai’s release and the repeal of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, under which Lai is being prosecuted for calling for foreign sanctions on mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials.
If convicted, Lai could be jailed for life.
Tohti is serving a life sentence for advocating for the rights of ethnic minority groups.
Beijing calls him a “separatist.”
Ding and Xu last year were sentenced to 12 and 14 years in jail respectively after being convicted of subverting state power.
The two men are best known for their advocacy for civil society and equal access to education for children of migrant workers.
In 2010, Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), then imprisoned, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy for political reforms and human rights.
Beijing called the award a political farce. It refused to release Liu, who in 2017 died of liver cancer in jail.
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