The last time a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony featured an empty chair, symbolizing the imprisonment of the recipient in his home country, was when Adolph Hitler’s fascist regime prevented German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from attending in 1935. History repeated itself, after 75 years, on December 10 when the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

 

Liu is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence in China, on grounds of subversion. The writer and human rights activist has been highly critical of the Chinese government and what he calls the country’s moral and cultural bankruptcy.

 

In addition to Liu and Ossietzky, three other Nobel laureates were prevented from attending the ceremony. But in those three cases, family members were able to accept the award on the recipient’s behalf. The three were Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov (1975), Polish trade union activist Lech Walesa(1983) and Burma’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi (1991).

 

Normally, Nobel Prize recipients are allowed to give a speech. Because Liu was not present, Nobel Peace Prize Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland, in his presentation speech, quoted Liu: “The greatness of non-violent resistance is that even as man is faced with forceful tyranny and the resulting suffering, the victim responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Nobel Peace Ceremony in Absentia -- the Ossietzky Precedent (Sino Daily/Agence France-Presse)

The Nobel Peace Prize's Empty Chair (BBC News)

Nobel Peace Prize: Liu Xiaobo's Missing Speech (by Malcolm Moore, The Telegraph)

Words of Chinese Dissident Read at Nobel Ceremony (Reuters)