Jigs
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Thursday, December 9, 2010
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Turkey will send a representative to attend a ceremony Friday honoring Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo despite heavy political pressure from China to boycott the event.
No one is expected to be on hand to accept the award on behalf of Liu, who was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on charges of inciting subversion. He was named as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October in recognition of long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.
On Thursday, China launched a final salvo challenging the honor for Liu ahead of the ceremony in Norway, saying most of the world opposes the move to name him a Nobel laureate.
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, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters. Any attempt to exert pressure on China ... cannot succeed.
Turkeys Ambassador to Oslo Hayati Güven will attend the event despite Chinas calling on the Turkish government not to send a representative.
The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu coincided with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabaos visit to Ankara last October. During the visit, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was careful not to let any members of the press pose questions to his Chinese counterpart to avoid embarrassing his guest. Demonstrations took place during the visit to protest the pressure exerted by the Chinese government against Uighurs, a Turkic minority group in Xinjiang in western China.
Erdoğan had previously drawn criticism from Beijing for saying the ethnic clashes that erupted in summer 2009 in the regional capital Urumqi, leaving nearly 200 dead, amounted to genocide
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Turkey will send a representative to attend a ceremony Friday honoring Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo despite heavy political pressure from China to boycott the event.
No one is expected to be on hand to accept the award on behalf of Liu, who was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on charges of inciting subversion. He was named as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October in recognition of long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.
On Thursday, China launched a final salvo challenging the honor for Liu ahead of the ceremony in Norway, saying most of the world opposes the move to name him a Nobel laureate.
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, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters. Any attempt to exert pressure on China ... cannot succeed.
Turkeys Ambassador to Oslo Hayati Güven will attend the event despite Chinas calling on the Turkish government not to send a representative.
The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu coincided with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabaos visit to Ankara last October. During the visit, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was careful not to let any members of the press pose questions to his Chinese counterpart to avoid embarrassing his guest. Demonstrations took place during the visit to protest the pressure exerted by the Chinese government against Uighurs, a Turkic minority group in Xinjiang in western China.
Erdoğan had previously drawn criticism from Beijing for saying the ethnic clashes that erupted in summer 2009 in the regional capital Urumqi, leaving nearly 200 dead, amounted to genocide
