Beijing, Oct. 12: As soon as Mr Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China’s censorship machine kicked in to suppress the news.
When the prize was announced on Friday in Oslo, the Communist regime’s propaganda department moved quickly to prevent any mention in its media. Television, radio, press, phone services and the Internet were all affected.
The state network, China Central Television, carried not a word of the peace prize, preferring to open its nightly news programme with a report on floods in its southern province of Hainan.
Initial reports on Mr Liu on foreign networks such as CNN, BBC and French satellite channel TV5 were blacked out. And on popular Chinese web portals such as Sina or Sohu, the Nobel announcement was nowhere to be seen.
“Chinese journalists have received directives from the propaganda department forbidding them from publishing anything” about Mr Liu’s prize, Mr Renaud de Spens, a Beijing-based independent expert on China’s media, said.
On Tuesday, China said that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr Liu Xiaobo would not influence the country’s political system.
“Some politicians from other countries are trying to use this opportunity to attack China,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Ma Zhaoxu, told reporters, adding the Nobel committee’s decision “shows no respect for China’s judicial system.” He warned that it would be a big mistake “If some people try to change China’s political system in this way.”