Global General

Norwegian jurist calls Nobel Peace Prize wrong, illegal

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-10-13 10:37

Norwegian jurist and writer Fredrik S. Heffermehl called it a wrong decision and illegal to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, according to the website of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

In a comment on the website on Oct 8, the jurist said the Nobel Peace Prize was to support those organizations and individuals who have made significant contributions to defend peace, promote disarmament and abolish national military forces.

The only criterion to award the prize is "peace" and "disarmament," added Heffermehl, who took the committee to the Administrative Court in Stockholm under the charge of "breaching Nobel's wishes and illegally awarding the peace prize" two years ago.

On Oct 10, Heffermehl further criticized that the selection of the peace prize winner by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has violated Nobel's intended purpose, in a posting published on the website of The World Association of International Studies (WAIS), founded in 1965 at Stanford University.

Nobel established the prize for "the champions of peace" to support their efforts at disarmament and peace movement.

"With all due respect to Liu Xiaobo, this is yet another example that this is no longer Nobel's prize, it is the peace prize of the Norwegian Storting (the supreme legislature in Norway)."

The best the committee could do for human rights, democracy, poverty alleviation, and environmental protection would be to wholeheartedly defend the work that the Nobel would support, for deep change in international relations and abolition of national military forces.

Heffermehl also said the Nobel committee has not received prize money for free use, but was entrusted with money to give to pivotal elements in creating peace, breaking the vicious circle of arms races and military power games.

From this point of view the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize is again an illegitimate prize awarded by an illegitimate committee.

In his book The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted, Fredrik Heffermehl finds the Norwegian Nobel Committee has come under increasing political, geopolitical, and commercial pressures to make inappropriate awards.