Nobel Committee Considering Chinese and Afghan Activists for Prize

Added by James Morley on October 7, 2010

After awarding president Obama the Nobel Peace Prize when he been president for only nine months, the Nobel Committee is considering an Afghan women rights campaigner and a Chinese dissident as winners for 2010.

Nobel Peace Prize specialists said that the committee might opt for a rather traditional choice this year such as nominees with a larger history of accomplishments.

This is in part due to the fact that in 2009 the choice to award freshly appointed president Obama the Nobel Peace Prize made the Committee the target of much criticism.

“The committee is under very considerable pressure from many sources,” said Jan Egeland, head of a foreign relations institute in Oslo.

One of the leading candidates coined by analysts is an Afghan doctor, named is Sima Samar, who is also head of a committee for human rights in Afghanistan.

The other choice might be Liu Xiaobo, a literature professor of Chinese origins, sentenced to 11 years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power” when he encouraged multi-party democracy talks in China. Herta Muller, former Nobel Literature Prize winner, and Vaclav Havel support Xiaobo’s candidature.

However, some see an eventual award given to Xiaobo as a far-cry from Alfred Nobel’s initial focus on peace and disarmament. Just as well, China and Norway have memories of harsh relations due to an award given by the Nobel Committee in 1989 to Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.