Photo/Illutration Oslo City Hall, the venue for the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10, 2024 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

It was a brutally cold winter day. The thermometer read minus 8 degrees. The sky hung low in a dense, painterly white, and the wind had an edge sharp enough to sting exposed skin.

Fifteen years ago on Dec. 10, 2010, I was in Oslo, covering a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony shadowed by unmistakable political tension.

Inside Oslo City Hall, the venue for the ceremony, the laureate was nowhere to be seen. An empty chair stood apart, the gold medal placed upon it like a mute provocation.

The recipient, Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, was in prison. Beijing would not even allow his family or supporters to leave the country.

Outside, as fine powder snow drifted through the air, a 63-year-old Chinese man protesting the award told me, “For democratization, what we need is economic growth.”

China, of course, did grow—spectacularly. It later declared victory over extreme poverty. Yet, political liberalization did not follow. If anything, it moved in reverse.

This year, on Dec. 10, history rhymed. Another Nobel Peace Prize ceremony unfolded without the laureate in the hall.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said to be in hiding amid an increasingly dictatorial clampdown by President Nicolas Maduro, undertook a covert, high-risk journey from her country but did not arrive in time. She made it to Oslo only after the ceremony had ended.

The scene stirred a deep sadness at the country’s bleak, degraded state. There is little left of the Venezuela that was once praised as a democratic standout in South America; indeed, it was even described as the “honor student of democracy” in the region.

And the pattern is no longer confined to one region. Around the world, authoritarian governments project confidence. In democratic societies, too, leaders and movements that test—and sometimes openly disdain—democratic norms are rising in plain sight.

The crisis of democracy is no longer theoretical; it is cumulative, visible and accelerating.

I found myself returning to Liu’s courtroom statement, prepared for his trial and dated Dec. 23, 2009. The text was later published widely and was read as his Nobel Lecture in absentia at the 2010 ceremony.

Titled “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement,” it carried a hope both modest and radical: “I hope that I will be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisitions and that from now on no one will be incriminated because of speech.”

Liu did not live to see that hope realized. He died in state custody in 2017, leaving behind a noble conviction—and ideals that outlived him.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 12

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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