Warsaw: Polish Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa offered today to accept this year's award on behalf of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
"I am ready to represent him, along with other Nobel laureates, to draw public attention to the fact that human rights are being violated, and that the winner of the most important prize for the struggle for freedom is being prevented from coming to collect it," Walesa said in a telephone interview.
Walesa, president of Poland from 1990 to 1995, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his bloodless opposition to Poland's communist regime.
"Of course we'd only represent him symbolically, during the actual ceremony. The medal and diploma, and the prize money that goes with it, will remain in Oslo waiting for Liu Xiaobo," he said.
China's rulers were enraged by the decision to give the 2010 prize to 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.
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