STOCKHOLM — This year's Nobel literature winner Mo Yan, who has been criticized for his cozy relationship with China's Communist Party, defended censorship Thursday as something as necessary as airport security checks.
He also suggested he has no plans to join an appeal calling for the release of the jailed 2010 Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo.
Mo
has been criticized by human rights activists for not being a more
outspoken defendant of freedom of speech and for being a member of the
Communist Party-backed writers’ association.
His comments Thursday, made in Stockholm, appear unlikely to soften his critics’ views toward him.
Awarding
him the prize has also brought criticism from previous Nobel winners.
Herta Mueller, the 2009 literature laureate, called the jury’s choice of
Mo a “catastrophe” in an interview with the Swedish daily Dagens
Nyheter last month. She also accused Mo of protecting China’s censorship
laws.
Mo said he doesn’t feel that censorship should stand in the
way of truth but that any defamation, or rumors, “should be censored.”
“But
I also hope that censorship, per se, should have the highest
principle,” he said in comments translated by an interpreter from
Chinese into English.
Mo, a Communist party member and vice
president of China’s official writers association, spoke at a news
conference in Stockholm, where he is spending several days before
receiving his prestigious prize in an awards ceremony next Monday.
Addressing
an issue that is extremely sensitive for China’s authoritarian
Communist regime, Mo likened censorship to the thorough security
procedures he was subjected to as he traveled to Stockholm.
“When I
was taking my flight, going through the customs … they also wanted
to check me — even taking off my belt and shoes,” he said. “But I think
these checks are necessary.”
Mo also dodged questions about fellow
writer and compatriot Liu Xiaobo, who won the Peace Prize in 2010 but
who remains in prison.
Although he has previously said he hopes Liu will be freed soon, he refused to elaborate more on the case.
“On
the same evening of my winning the prize, I already expressed my
opinion, and you can get online to make a search,” he said, telling the
crowd that he hoped they wouldn’t press him on the subject of Liu.
Earlier
this week, an appeal signed by 134 Nobel laureates, from peace prize
winners like South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Taiwanese-American
chemist Yuan T. Lee, called the detention of Liu and his wife a
violation of international law and urged their immediate release.
But
Mo suggested he had no plans of adding his name to that petition. “I
have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me
to do something I don’t do it,” he said, adding that has been in his
stance in the past decade.
Mo is to receive his Nobel prize along with the winners in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics.
The Nobel Peace Prize is handed out in a separate ceremony in Oslo on the same day.
