OSLO: The head of the Nobel committee placed this year’s peace prize on an empty chair Friday as he called on a furious Beijing to free the new laureate Liu Xiaobo from his Chinese prison cell.
As Communist authorities in Beijing fumed at the award for the 54-year-old dissident and pro-China demonstrators gathered outside the Oslo awards venue, Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland insisted Liu was an innocent man.
"We regret that the laureate is not present here today," Jagland said as he placed the peace prize diploma and gold medal on the chair.
"Liu has only exercised his civil rights. He has not done anything wrong. He must be released."
Although around 20 countries, including Egypt, stayed away from the event, dozens of ambassadors joined Norway’s king and queen for the speeches and ceremony in a flower-decked Oslo City Hall.
Movie stars Denzel Washington and Anne Hathaway, who will host Saturday’s Nobel concert in Oslo, as well as outgoing Speaker of the US House Nancy Pelosi were also among those attending.
The audience also heard a speech by Liu, written when he was sentenced last year, which was read by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann.
"There is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme," it read.
"I hope that I will be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition and that from now on no one will be incriminated because of speech."
In China live broadcasts of the event by CNN and the BBC were blacked out by censors as last year’s laureate, US President Barack Obama, hailed Liu as a representative of "universal" values.
"The values he espouses are universal, his struggle is peaceful, and he should be released as soon as possible," the US president said.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also urged China to immediately release Liu Xiaobo.
And there was a show of support for him in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong where a crowd of around 150 people clapped and cheered as they watched the ceremony on a giant screen at a park in the financial district.
Liu is an author and former professor who was at the forefront of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
He was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring "Charter 08", a manifesto that spread quickly on the internet calling for political reform and greater rights in China.
Liu will receive his medal, diploma and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (€1.1 million, $1.5 million) at a later date.
Friday marked only the second time in the more than 100-year history of the prize that neither the laureate nor a representative is able to accept the award.
The only other time was when German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who was locked up in a Nazi concentration camp, could not travel to Oslo for his prize ceremony in 1936.
Beijing has described the Norwegian Nobel Committee as "clowns," and has threatened "consequences" for countries that show Liu support.
The laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, has been placed under house arrest since the prize was announced on Oct. 8, and hours before Friday’s ceremony in Oslo, security was strong in front of her Beijing apartment complex, with marked and unmarked police cars lining the road.
Jagland meanwhile stressed the importance of the prize.
"China with its 1.3 billion people is carrying mankind’s fate on its shoulders. If the country proves capable of developing a social market economy with full civil rights, this will have a huge favorable impact on the world.
"If not, there is a danger of social and economic crises arising in the country, with negative consequences for us all," he added.
