Stark contrast for China's Nobel laureates - one fêted, one behind bars

Yesterday's UN Human Rights Day was marked by the starkly different fates of China's two Nobel laureates.

While Nobel literature laureate Mo Yan hogged the limelight at the awards ceremony in Stockholm yesterday, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo remains behind bars, convicted on subversion charges and serving an 11-year sentence at a prison more than 400 kilometres northeast of Beijing.

Apart from celebrating the 64th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10 also marked the day that Charter 08 - a manifesto Liu helped draft calling for sweeping political and legal reforms - was published four years ago.

Liu, who turns 57 later this month, was detained in 2008 and was convicted in December 2009 of inciting subversion for co-drafting the human rights petition.

While Mo has declined to join 134 Nobel laureates from across the world in an appeal for Liu's release, mainland rights activists proposed a series of activities to mark the date and to continue calling on Beijing to release Liu and his wife, Liu Xia , who has been kept under house arrest, largely incommunicado.

Meanwhile, jittery authorities tightened security near the homes of the jailed Nobel laureate and other dissidents, according to several activists, including Hu Jia , who was himself jailed for more than three years on subversion charges. Hu told Agence France-Presse that he was barred from leaving his home after he proposed organising events near Liu's home.

Hu made a Twitter post on Friday suggesting that a park near Liu Xia's home, in the capital's western suburbs, would "be a good place to hold a human rights press conference" to mark the date. "The police are keeping me in my home until Tuesday to prevent me from meeting people like you so that I will not be photographed or filmed for Human Rights Day," he said.