Nobel Peace Prize 2020: Republicans, Democrats Unite to Nominate Hong Kong Protesters

The “story of the year” in 2019 could well be the unrest in Hong Kong by pro-democracy protesters. In recent weeks the coronavirus has taken top billing but for members of the U.S Congress, the events in Hong Kong are important enough to warrant its participants a nomination for the 2020 Nobel Prize.

A bipartisan group of prominent U.S. lawmakers, led by Marco Rubio and James McGovern who are the Republican and Democratic heads of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, has scripted a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize committee making the case that the pro-democracy protesters be awarded the prize.

Excerpts from the letter include a reference to the “countless and often anonymous individuals [who] risked their lives, their health, their jobs, and their education to support a better future for Hong Kong... This prize would honor the millions of people in Hong Kong whose bravery and determination have inspired the world.” The letter also praised the movement as “impressively organized and coherent, yet notably leaderless and flexible.”

The other five categories for which the Nobel Prize is awarded is Literature, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry and Economic Sciences, all requiring some accomplishment or discovery. The Noble Peace price is often politicized with more deserving nominees being snubbed.

One recent “snub” was in 2007 as a more deserving recipient would have been Poland’s Irene Sendler, who saved more than 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto in World War II. Instead, it went to former U.S VP Al Gore for raising awareness of global warning with his book “An Inconvenient Truth”, all the while maintaining a personal dwelling that used 20 times the energy of a normal household and later enriching himself through dealings with AlJazeera, a state-funded broadcaster funded by profits from fossil fuels.

Aside from any Nobel Prize legitimacy, China is likely to see the move as more “proof” that the U.S. is the primary source of foreign interference helping the protesters. China has already described the U.S. as a “black hand” behind the protests, a claim the U.S. State Department has dismissed as “ridiculous.”

The Communist regime compares the demonstrators to terrorists due to their violent acts that have included throwing gas bombs and bricks at police and vandalizing the city’s subway system.

The unrest in Hong Kong began as a show of opposition to an extradition bill that has since been scrapped. Chief Executive Carrie Lam had admitted that her handling of the bill was a “political failure” as the protests evolved into wider defiance against Beijing’s tightening grip over the former British colony.

The American lawmakers’ recommendation follows a 2018 Nobel letter in support of prominent activist Joshua Wong and other leaders of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. Because the current protest movement does not have a clear leader, it remains to be seen which protesters will travel to Stockholm to receive the medal If they should win the award.