If Chee Soon Juan or even Seelan Palay wins the European Union's top human rights prize, PM Lee will start pressing the panic button.
Europe awards human rights prize to Chinese activist
Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia speaks during a 2006 interview at a cafe in Beijing. Hu Jia won the European Union's top human rights prize Thursday, despite a warning from Beijing. (Ng Han Guan/The Associated Preess)
BEIJING: Hu Jia, the soft-spoken, bespectacled advocate for democracy and human rights in China, was awarded Europe's most prestigious human rights awards on Thursday in a pointed rebuke of the ruling Communist Party that comes as European leaders are arriving in Beijing for a weekend summit meeting.
Hu, 35, was chosen by the European Parliament as this year's recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, despite warnings from Beijing that his selection would harm relations with the European Union. Last year, Hu testified via video link before a hearing of the European Parliament about the human rights situation in China. Weeks later, Hu was jailed and later sentenced to three and a half years in prison on a conviction for subversion based on his critical writings about Communist Party rule.
Hu has been one of China's leading figures on a range of human rights issues, while also speaking out on behalf of AIDS sufferers and for environmental protection. His selection comes after he had been considered a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari.
"Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People's Republic of China," said the European Parliament president, Hans-Gert Poettering. "The European Parliament is sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China."
The timing may make for a frosty weekend in Beijing as European leaders are meeting with top Chinese officials at the Asia-Europe meeting. Behind the scenes, China had lobbied against Hu's candidacy for the Sakharov award. Song Zhe, the Chinese ambassador to the European Union, wrote a critical letter to the president of the European Parliament on Oct. 16.
"If the European Parliament should award this prize to Hu Jia, that would inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to China-EU relations," Song wrote, according to The Associated Press.
China had also warned against awarding him the Nobel, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, had described him in scathing terms as a convicted criminal.
"The Chinese government will be upset," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has co-authored essays with Hu. "But as a responsible nation that is trying to integrate into the international community, China has to understand that its conduct should follow international protocols. It should embrace the criticism as an opportunity to improve China's human rights condition."
Hu remains imprisoned in Beijing and could not be reached for comment. His wife, Zeng Jinyan, a prominent blogger and human rights activist, also could not be contacted. She has lived for months under house arrest with the couple's infant daughter.
The Sakharov award is an embarrassment for the Communist Party less than two months after China's successful staging of the Olympics. But if the Chinese government proved it could smoothly manage the world's biggest sporting event, it also prevented demonstrations at designated protest zones, instituted broad restrictions on the domestic media and placed numerous dissidents under house arrest or surveillance.
Hu's conviction in April was part of a nationwide crackdown against dissidents in what many human rights advocates considered a pre-Olympic silencing campaign. A devout Buddhist, Hu has dedicated himself to a range of issues during the past 12 years, championing the legal rights of Chinese citizens and promoting greater democracy. He also used a personal Web site and e-mails to become a one-man clearinghouse of information on human rights abuses.
Hu graduated from Beijing's Capital University of Economics and Trade in 1996 and almost immediately plunged into China's nascent civil society. He traveled to Inner Mongolia to plant trees as a measure to slow the advance of the Gobi Desert.
By 2000, China was facing the rapid spread of AIDS, a problem the government had initially denied and remained reluctant to publicly confront. Hu formed a nongovernmental organization, Loving Source, and focused on caring for people infected in a blood-selling scandal in Henan Province.
Hu later began joining Internet petition campaigns calling for the release of political prisoners, while also calling on the authorities to uphold the rights of citizens.
His activism quickly made him a target. In 2006, he spent 168 days under house arrest. Rather than disappear from public view, Hu produced a documentary, "Prisoner in Freedom City," in which he filmed state security agents harassing his wife.
Europe awards human rights prize to Chinese activist
Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia speaks during a 2006 interview at a cafe in Beijing. Hu Jia won the European Union's top human rights prize Thursday, despite a warning from Beijing. (Ng Han Guan/The Associated Preess)
BEIJING: Hu Jia, the soft-spoken, bespectacled advocate for democracy and human rights in China, was awarded Europe's most prestigious human rights awards on Thursday in a pointed rebuke of the ruling Communist Party that comes as European leaders are arriving in Beijing for a weekend summit meeting.
Hu, 35, was chosen by the European Parliament as this year's recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, despite warnings from Beijing that his selection would harm relations with the European Union. Last year, Hu testified via video link before a hearing of the European Parliament about the human rights situation in China. Weeks later, Hu was jailed and later sentenced to three and a half years in prison on a conviction for subversion based on his critical writings about Communist Party rule.
Hu has been one of China's leading figures on a range of human rights issues, while also speaking out on behalf of AIDS sufferers and for environmental protection. His selection comes after he had been considered a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari.
"Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People's Republic of China," said the European Parliament president, Hans-Gert Poettering. "The European Parliament is sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China."
The timing may make for a frosty weekend in Beijing as European leaders are meeting with top Chinese officials at the Asia-Europe meeting. Behind the scenes, China had lobbied against Hu's candidacy for the Sakharov award. Song Zhe, the Chinese ambassador to the European Union, wrote a critical letter to the president of the European Parliament on Oct. 16.
"If the European Parliament should award this prize to Hu Jia, that would inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to China-EU relations," Song wrote, according to The Associated Press.
China had also warned against awarding him the Nobel, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, had described him in scathing terms as a convicted criminal.
"The Chinese government will be upset," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has co-authored essays with Hu. "But as a responsible nation that is trying to integrate into the international community, China has to understand that its conduct should follow international protocols. It should embrace the criticism as an opportunity to improve China's human rights condition."
Hu remains imprisoned in Beijing and could not be reached for comment. His wife, Zeng Jinyan, a prominent blogger and human rights activist, also could not be contacted. She has lived for months under house arrest with the couple's infant daughter.
The Sakharov award is an embarrassment for the Communist Party less than two months after China's successful staging of the Olympics. But if the Chinese government proved it could smoothly manage the world's biggest sporting event, it also prevented demonstrations at designated protest zones, instituted broad restrictions on the domestic media and placed numerous dissidents under house arrest or surveillance.
Hu's conviction in April was part of a nationwide crackdown against dissidents in what many human rights advocates considered a pre-Olympic silencing campaign. A devout Buddhist, Hu has dedicated himself to a range of issues during the past 12 years, championing the legal rights of Chinese citizens and promoting greater democracy. He also used a personal Web site and e-mails to become a one-man clearinghouse of information on human rights abuses.
Hu graduated from Beijing's Capital University of Economics and Trade in 1996 and almost immediately plunged into China's nascent civil society. He traveled to Inner Mongolia to plant trees as a measure to slow the advance of the Gobi Desert.
By 2000, China was facing the rapid spread of AIDS, a problem the government had initially denied and remained reluctant to publicly confront. Hu formed a nongovernmental organization, Loving Source, and focused on caring for people infected in a blood-selling scandal in Henan Province.
Hu later began joining Internet petition campaigns calling for the release of political prisoners, while also calling on the authorities to uphold the rights of citizens.
His activism quickly made him a target. In 2006, he spent 168 days under house arrest. Rather than disappear from public view, Hu produced a documentary, "Prisoner in Freedom City," in which he filmed state security agents harassing his wife.
