Digital Peace Laureate
“The Internet has been lauded by Nobel Peace prize-winning Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo as ‘God’s gift to China’.” Xiaobo says activists can use the Internet to their advantage.
“On October 8, it was announced that Liu was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He became China’s first Nobel laureate, after more than a century of exclusion. He was supported by past winners Vaclav Havel, the Dalai Lama, and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while his own government has warned the Nobel Institute against giving Liu the award, threatening strained relations between Oslo and Beijing. Liu also became, in a sense, the first ‘digital’ peace laureate. Though his history as an activist pre-dates the internet, his praise for it is well-documented; he once dubbed the internet ‘God’s gift to China’, in recognition of its role as a tool for dissidents.”
