US lawmakers nominate four jailed Chinese dissidents for Nobel Peace Prize

Washington — Two U.S. lawmakers have nominated Jimmy Lai, a former Hong Kong publisher now standing trial on national security charges, and three other jailed Chinese dissidents for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee released Thursday, Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and Sen. Jeffrey Merkley, the co-chair, nominated Lai, along with Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti and legal activists Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong. “The Peace Prize will focus world attention on all those struggling to exercise their fundamental human rights in the People’s Republic of China.” Beijing has become assertive in defending its rights record and has accused the U.S. of using the issue as a pretext to suppress China’s rise. Last week, Chen Xu, the Chinese ambassador in Geneva, said during a United Nations-backed review of the country’s human rights record that China “upholds respect for and protection of human rights as a task of importance in state governance.” “We have embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China’s national conditions and so-called historic achievements in this process,” Xu said.