Director of Nobel Institute reveals Chinese threat over Liu Xiaobo, who is in jail for incitement to subvert state power

This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

Awarding the Nobel peace prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo would contradict its founding principles, China's foreign ministry said today.

Its comments came after the director of Norway's Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad, said a senior Chinese official had warned him that giving the author the award would affect relations between the two countries.

"This person was sentenced to jail because he violated Chinese law," the foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news briefing in Beijing.

"His actions are diametrically opposed to the aims of the Nobel prize. Mr Nobel's behest was that the Nobel peace prize be awarded to somebody who promoted peace between peoples, promoted international friendship and disarmament."

Earlier, Lundestad said China's deputy foreign minister, Fu Ying, delivered the warning in a meeting at the Chinese embassy during her visit to Oslo this summer.

"[Such a decision] would pull the wrong strings in relations between Norway and China, it would be seen as an unfriendly act," Lundestad told Norwegian news agency NTB.

Lundestad, who organises the meetings of the five-member Nobel committee, said China had given such warnings before, but that they had no influence on the committee's work.

Václav Havel, Desmond Tutu and others have called on the Nobel committee to give this year's award to Liu, who was sentenced on Christmas Day last year to 11 years in jail for incitement to subvert state power.

The author and former university professor had co-authored Charter 08, a groundbreaking call for reforms in China.

His wife, Liu Xia, told the Guardian that he does not know he has been nominated because he is not allowed access to news from the outside world and she is not allowed to discuss such issues with him when they meet.

Liu served two years in jail for his role in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989. He later spent three years in a prison camp for speaking out against China's one-party system.

In an article for the International Herald Tribune last week, Havel and other signatories to Charter 77 – which inspired Charter 08 – praised Liu for "more than two decades of unflinching and peaceful advocacy for reform".

The Nobel committee is due to announce the winner of this year's peace prize in Oslo on 8 October.