You're watching BBC news and suddenly the TV screen goes blank. You flick over and the other channels are working. You get to Channel 4 news and suddenly - blackout again.
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| Carl von Ossietzky - 1915 |
You sit down at the computer, bring up your favourite news website and for some bizarre reason it says the 'connection has been reset' and refuses to take you there. How strange - it was working fine yesterday.
A good friend in Washington contacted me yesterday to point me in the direction of an article in the Washington Post. Although the article was interesting and pretty on-the-money, buried in the text was a small piece of information that most other news corporations either didn't know about, or had neglected to mention. It concerned a man by the name of Carl von Ossietzky.
[NB. the Media have since picked up on it]
[NB. the Media have since picked up on it]
In a few hours, the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will be held. It will not however be handed out to winner of the award Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, as he remains in a Chinese prison - and will do for many more years.
China has recently been outraged by the decision to award Mr. Liu the honour, even going so far as to try and discredit the Nobel committee by creating their own 'Confucious Peace Prize'.
But is the situation in China really all that bad?
As dissident Ai Wei Wei said on the BBC yesterday "People can be monitored, their phones can be tapped and you can be followed. They can find you, they can intimidate you or scare you - or wrongly accuse you," he added.
In THIS previous post, I talked about the petty childish actions of the Chinese government, and the events of the last twenty-four hours have proved me right. The hilariously shambolic Confucious Peace Prize which the Chinese Government cobbled together did make me laugh for a long time, whilst also saddening me by how pathetic it was.
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| An unnamed girl dubbed the angel of peace accepts the Confucious Peace Prize on behalf of the winner Lien Chan who didn't attend the ceremony and said he only learned of the award through media reports. |
But yesterday the entire BBC online service, along with BBC World News (only available via satellite anyway) was blocked throughout China. One person I spoke to in Shanghai, who did not wish to be named, told me what they thought this means: "Sometimes things like this happen in China, but Shanghai is usually the last place for websites to stop working. This time it happened at the same time.
"I use the BBC website every day and find it a very useful way to hear about news which China doesn't think is important.
"The reason BBC and other news websites have stopped working is because the government feels embarassed about Liu Xiaobo. He has become famous by revealing the truth about the government. But they can just cover it up and lie. Most people don't know."
So while Aung San Suu Kyi offers sympathy to Mr. Liu, the BBC works its diplomatic magic, and the organisers of the Nobel Prize attempt to clarify their position, China will just have to sit and watch uncomfortably as the governent loses face in front of the world later today.Another Tiananmen Square veteran, Wu'er Kaixi will collect the award on behalf of Mr. Liu, and there's nothing that the Chinese government can do.
It's just a damned shame that Liu Xiaobo won't be able to collect the prize himself.
So now, the question you've all been waiting for...
Who on Earth is Carl von Ossietzky?
When Liu Xiaobo doesn't attend the ceremony today, it will not be the first time a laureate has been unable to collect.
And who was it that had imprisoned Mr. von Ossietzky - the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace?
The Nazis, of course.
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| Carl von Ossietzky - Nobel Peace Prize winner 1935 Pictured in a concentration camp in Esterwegen, 1934 |
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| Liu Xiaobo - Nobel Peace Prize winner 2010 Currently imprisoned in China. |
CONGRATULATIONS LIU XIAOBO!
WINNER - NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2010
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