With all due respect to Martti Ahtisaari, who has played an outstanding role over the years in mediating conflicts, I cannot believe that he was the best choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, especially given the speculation that the Nobel Committee was considering giving it to Hu Jia and/or other Chinese activists.

Honoring another European bureaucrat-politician at a time when China’s human rights activists labor in anonymity, largely forgotten around the world (or worse, willfully ignored in order to appease the ChiComs) is both a travesty and a farce.

I once heard a story, perhaps apocryphal, that upon learning that he had been nominated for the Peace prize, Vaclav Havel urged the committee to consider instead a then-little-known human rights and democracy activist from the other side of the world.  The result was the awarding of the Prize in 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, an act that has helped maintain public awareness of and support for the cause of human rights and democracy in Burma.

It is a shame that Mr. Ahtisaari did not do the same when he was nominated.

Related posts

• Reindeer Games: Bush, Human Rights, and China
• Morning Buzz: Chinese Democracy
• Controlympics: A Journalist Demands An Honest Answer
• Wonk’d: How to Cover the Olympics
• What Were You Thinking, Mary Carillo?