Perry Link writes on his New York Review of Books blog about attending the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, and his discussions with exiled Chinese dissidents who also participated:
The ceremony was one of the most exquisite and moving public events I have ever witnessed. The presentation speech was made by Thorbjørn Jagland, the chairman of the prize committee who is a former prime minister of Norway and now secretary-general of the Council of Europe. Only a few minutes into the speech, he said:
We regret that the Laureate is not present here today. He is in isolation in a prison in northeast China…. This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate.
When he had finished reading these words the audience of about a thousand people interrupted with applause. The applause continued for about thirty seconds and then, when it seemed that the time had come for it to recede, it suddenly took on a second life. It continued on and on, and then turned into a standing ovation, lasting three or four minutes. Jagland’s face seemed to show an expression of relief. After the ceremony, in a news interview, he said that he understood the prolonged applause not only as powerful support for Liu Xiaobo but as an endorsement of the controversial decision that his five-person committee had made.
In the remainder of his speech Jagland stressed the close connections among human rights, democracy, and peace. He reviewed the other four occasions in Nobel history when a Peace Laureate was prevented from traveling to Oslo: in 1935, the Nazis held Carl von Ossietzky in prison; in 1975 Andrei Sakharov was not allowed to leave the USSR; in 1983, Lech Walesa feared he would be barred from reentering Poland if he went to Oslo; and in 1991, Aung Sang Suu Kyi was under house arrest in Burma. Even so, each of the latter three laureates was able to send a family member to collect the prize. Only Ossietzky and now Liu Xiaobo were prevented from sending a family member.
Jagland stressed that his committee had great respect for the Chinese nation, and observed that support of dissidents makes countries stronger, not weaker. The US had become a stronger nation because of the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., another Nobel Peace laureate.
Footage of the full ceremony is now available on the Nobel site. Read more about the significance of Liu’s empty chair for Chinese netizens and media.
