Oslo:
Imprisoned in China and with close family members forbidden to leave the country, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, an empty chair representing his absence at the prize ceremony here.
Noting Mr. Liu's absence, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, said to a standing ovation: "This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate."
"It is no coincidence that nearly all the richest countries in the world are democratic, because democracy mobilizes new human and technological resources," he said. "China's new status entails increased responsibility. China must be prepared for criticism, and regard it as a positive, as an opportunity for improvement."
Representatives from the 60-plus diplomatic missions accredited in Oslo normally attend the ceremony. But this year, 16 ambassadors, including those from China and Russia, declined to attend, Nobel officials said, although not all characterized their absence as a direct result of the intense pressure and threats of reprisal from China.
With no one to accept the Nobel medal and diploma, they were ceremoniously placed on Mr. Liu's empty chair.
It was the first time in 75 years that no representative of the winner was allowed to make the trip to receive the peace medal, a diploma and the $1.5 million check that comes with it.
The last time that happened was in 1935, when Hitler prevented that year's winner, Count Carl von Ossietzky, who was imprisoned in a concentration camp, from attending the ceremony, along with anyone else from Germany.
At Friday's ceremony, the Norwegian actress and movie director Liv Ullmann read a copy of Mr. Liu's appeal to a Chinese court in December 2009, days before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
"I have no enemies and no hatred," Ms. Ullmann read. "Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation's development and social change, to counter the regime's hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love."
President Obama, who won the peace prize last year, issued a statement saying Mr. Liu was "far more deserving of this award than I was," and calling for his release "as soon as possible."
"We respect China's extraordinary accomplishment in lifting millions out of poverty, and believe that human rights include the dignity that comes with freedom from want," the president's statement said. "But Mr. Liu reminds us that human dignity also depends upon the advance of democracy, open society, and the rule of law."
In Beijing, the Chinese authorities continued to pour vitriol on the award while intensifying their crackdown on scores of people they perceive as a threat.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has said repeatedly that it did not intend to snub or attack China when it selected Mr. Liu, who has been a thorn in the government's side for years but is better known outside the country than inside. Instead, the committee said, the point is to remind China that with power comes responsibility, and that economic growth should be coupled with political reform.
"The fate of China will be the fate of the world," Mr. Jagland said on Thursday. "If China is able to develop a social market economy with full civil rights, it will have a positive impact on the world as a whole."
Norway itself has been punished by China, which recently called the five members of the Nobel committee "clowns." Among other things, China has indefinitely suspended bilateral trade talks between the two countries. The two countries have not spoken officially since Mr. Liu was announced as the winner of the prize in October.
Mr. Liu was detained in December 2008, after co-authoring Charter '08 -- a call for reform and rights in China.
In Beijing on Thursday, Zhang Zuhua, a former official who helped write Charter '08, was forced into a vehicle by police officers, according to rights advocates, and dozens of other people were either confined to their homes or escorted out of the capital. At least one of them, the rights lawyer Teng Biao, was told by the police that he could return home on Sunday.
Blue construction panels went up in front of Mr. Liu's apartment building in an apparent attempt to block the sightlines of foreign cameramen who gathered there throughout the day. Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, has been held incommunicado inside her apartment since shortly after the award was announced two months ago and other members of Mr. Liu's family have been under tight surveillance.
Ms. Liu's mother and one of his brothers were reluctant to speak to a reporter on Friday. In a text message, the brother, Liu Xiaoxuan, apologized, saying his phone was being monitored.
Calls to many of the 140 people in China whom Ms. Liu had invited to the ceremony yielded recordings saying their phones had been turned off. One of the few to pick up, Yu Fangqiang, the managing partner of an AIDS organization, said he could not talk because a minder was sitting at his side.
Wang Songlian, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said the tightened surveillance imposed on more than 300 people throughout the country rivaled the restrictions imposed during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party's ascension to power, which was celebrated last year.
Although the authorities have effectively silenced many of the country's most prominent critics, Ms. Wang said such efforts were self-defeating. "China has tried so hard to show it can rise peacefully, but making people disappear doesn't present a very good image to the outside world," she said. "It just shows how fearful the government is of dissent."
On Friday, Global Times, a nationalistic, populist tabloid affiliated with the party-owned People's Daily, branded the ceremony a "political farce" and described Oslo as a "cult center." Even as the state media railed against the award, censors meticulously scrubbed the Internet of any news stories or public comments that could be construed as sympathetic to Mr. Liu or the Nobel Prize. Broadcasts by news outlets like CNN and the BBC were blacked out, and their Web sites were inaccessible to those unwilling or unable to surmount the so-called Great Firewall.
By most accounts, propaganda officials had done their job well. In interviews with more than three dozen people across the capital on Friday, only a handful said they knew anything about Mr. Liu. Most of those who had heard that a Chinese citizen was the recipient of the peace prize parroted the government's contention that the award was a Western plot to embarrass the country.
Even if she knew nothing about this year's honoree, Xiao Feng, a 27-year-old food industry worker whose long red scarf matched her smartly designed glasses, said she thought he had probably done something to hinder China's development. "I think this year's prize is a little bit unfair," she said. "From what I can tell, its purpose is to humiliate China."
Nobel officials said on Friday that 48 countries had accepted the invitation while 16 ambassadors had declined.
The 16 absent envoys were from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba, the Palestinian Authority and Morocco, the officials said.
News reports earlier put the number of stayaways at 19 or 20. About 100 Chinese dissidents attended.
The list of countries not attending includes Western allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which, irrespective of their international ties, resemble countries like China where power is centralized and dissent is not tolerated. The countries attending include the United States, many European nations and emerging economies like India and South Africa.
It was not the first time a prominent dissident had been awarded the prize: Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet physicist, the Polish labor leader Lech Walesa and the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, have all been named winners and were represented at the Oslo ceremony by close relatives.
A group of Nobel laureates offered on Friday to mediate with the Chinese government in an effort to hasten Mr. Liu's release. The laureates, including the former South African President F. W. de Klerk, the Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi and the writer Elie Wiesel, signed a statement addressed to China's government, requesting the opportunity to "discuss the status of Liu Xiaobo and to establish what steps might be taken to facilitate his early release."