Tokyo: Former Chinese student leader Wuer
Kaixi will represent imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo
at a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Hiroshima next
month, a press report said on Wednesday.
Wuer, 42, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square
protests in Beijing who once studied with Liu, will read a
message on Liu`s behalf at the World Summit of Nobel Peace
Laureates, to be held from November 12-14, Kyodo news agency
said.
Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison last
December on subversion charges after co-authoring a manifesto
calling for political reform in China, was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize on October 8 -- enraging China`s rulers.
His wife, Liu Xia, was placed under house arrest at
the couple`s Beijing apartment when the award was announced
and has been largely unreachable since then, with her phone
apparently cut off.
Wuer is now based in Taiwan after being refused
permission to return to mainland China earlier this year.
The city office of Hiroshima, which will host the
meeting, said it could not immediately confirm the report,
which quoted officials at the summit`s secretariat in Rome.
A representative for Myanmar`s pro-democracy leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and is
now under house arrest in Yangon, may also take part in the
summit, Kyodo said.
The Hiroshima summit is expected to be attended by 10
laureates including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, the secretariat
said in a press release last week.
The statement said US President Barack Obama, the 2009
winner, had been formally invited to attend the meeting by
Hiroshima`s mayor and five laureates.
Obama has been requested to reiterate points made
during his April 2009 speech in Prague on the necessity of
dismantling the world`s remaining nuclear arsenals, the press
release said.
The summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners has been held
almost every year since its inauguration in Rome in 1999.
Hiroshima, which has rebuilt since its devastation by
a nuclear bomb in World War II, will be the first Japanese
city to host the summit.
PTI
