Chinese & Russian hot favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize
STOCKHOLM: The pundits’ wild guessing game is in full swing ahead of the Nobel season which opens on Monday, with Chinese or Russian human rights activists favourites to win the Peace Prize and France’s Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio tipped for the Literature Prize.
The Nobel committees never reveal the names of the nominees for the prestigious awards, leaving observers to resort to unbridled speculation about who could take
the honours.
For the Peace Prize, to be announced in Oslo on October 10, Chinese dissident Hu Jia and Chechen human rights lawyer Lidiya Yusupova are seen as strong contenders, as 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
“The prize this year will finally go to a Chinese dissident and I believe that the most likely is Hu Jia, perhaps together with his wife,” predicted Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
Nineteen years after awarding the prize to the Dalai Lama, the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee could choose to send a stinging reminder to the Chinese regime to stick to its vow to improve human rights.
Or it could opt to put the spotlight on Russia, according to Janne Haaland Matlary, a political science professor at Oslo University.
Yusupova, the former head of the Russian rights group Memorial in Grozny, collated information and statistics about Russian human rights abuses such as torture, kidnapping and executions across Chechnya.
Other names circulating as possible laureates are Vietnamese Buddhist monk and democracy activist Thich Quang Do, former French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt and Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
For the Literature Prize, which will be announced on October 9, Le Clezio’s name appears to stand out this year in Stockholm’s literary circles.
The Nobel Prize season kicks off Monday with the announcement of the Medicine Prize winner, followed by the Physics Prize on Tuesday and the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday. The Economics Prize announcement is due on October 13. The Nobel Prizes, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, were first awarded in 1901.
Laureates receive 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.42 million).
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