China’s Nobel-naysaying alternative honors Putin with Confucius Peace Prize

BEIJING — The sponsors of a would-be Chinese alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize held their second award ceremony on Friday, handing a gold Confucius statue and a certificate meant for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to a pair of exchange students, an organizer said.

The Confucius Prize ceremony comes a day before the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded in Oslo, Norway, and as a group of Nobel laureates launched a new campaign calling for China to release last year’s Nobel laureate, dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, from prison.

A group called the China International Peace Research Center hastily launched the Confucius Peace Prize last year in an attempt to counter the news of the Peace Prize going to Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for co-authoring an appeal for political reform.

Liu’s win enraged the government and Chinese nationalists, who accused the Nobel committee of interfering in China’s legal system as part of a plot to bring the nation down in disgrace.

The Confucius Peace Prize organization announced last month that Putin had been chosen to receive this year’s award, saying that during his 2000-2008 tenure as president Putin “brought remarkable enhancement to the military might and political status of Russia.” It also cited Putin’s crushing of anti-government forces in Chechnya.

The Confucius Prize -- the award established last year by a Chinese Think Tank to compete with the Nobel Prize -- has been awarded to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this year:

It praised his decision to go to war in Chechnya in 1999.
“His iron hand and toughness revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia,” read an English version of the committee’s statement. “He became the anti-terrorist No. 1 and the national hero.” So went the announcement by a group of 16 patriotic scholars awarding what they call their second annual “grass-roots” peace prize.

The sponsors also cited Putin's opposition to the NATO intervention in Libya and "for being selected to join the K.G.B. while in college, “which made true his teenage dream of joining the K.G.B.,” and for “acting as the propagandist of current political events” while in high school.""

The first awarding of the prize was a bit of a catastrophe last year, when the winner, former Taiwanese Vice President Lien Chan, was never informed that he had won, and the statue and prize money were instead handed to a little girl with no relation to him. No word yet on whether Putin will be on hand to pick up his award.

Putin was also due to receive a prize for democracy promotion from a German foundation this year, but it was eventually canceled after a media uproar. He beat out Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, Jacob Zuma, Kofi Annan, and the (Beijing-approved) Panchen Lama for the Confucius Award. http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/15/vladimir_putin_wins_confucius_prize

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