Chinese Rights Defenders Tipped for Nobel Prize

Civil rights Activist Hu Jia and his wife, who is presently under strict house arrest. (The Epoch Times)

Two imprisoned human rights defenders in China are the most likely recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, says a Norwegian peace expert who spoke to media last week. The buzz has angered the Chinese communist regime, anxious about the attention the award would bring to its human rights record.   

Prof. Stein Toeneson is head of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, where the Nobel committee resides, and he has accurately predicted who will win the prestigious prize before. He was one of the few who predicted that Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would win the Nobel last year.

This year, Prof. Toeneson has tipped Mr. Hu Jia and Mr. Gao Zhisheng, two intrepid dissidents imprisoned in China for their activism, to claim the prize when it is announced on Friday.

The Nobel Prize will be formally awarded in Oslo on Dec. 10, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Prof. Toeneson decided this year’s winner should be someone from China because, while the Olympics were a great success for China, they did not result in the improvements in human rights that Beijing had promised when awarded the Games. [caption id=“attachment_74724” align=“alignleft” width=“320” caption="Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, known as