Thread: China has bestowed its version of the Nobel Peace Prize on Mugabe

I nearly posted this in the jokes forum, then I realised they were serious.

But it's too fucking funny to post as News.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been awarded “China’s alternative” to the Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee called his inspired national leadership and service to pan-Africanism.

The 91-year-old Mugabe is the latest in a series of critics of the West who have received the Confucius Peace Prize, first awarded in 2010 amid Beijing’s anger and resentment over the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

The award was publicly announced on September 28 and reported by Chinese edition of the Global Times the next day. But the story attracted renewed attention by foreign media and went viral after a story published on Quartz.com Wednesday.

Mugabe has “overcome difficulties of all kinds and has strongly committed himself to constructing his nation’s political and economic order, while strongly supporting pan-Africanism and African independence,” the committee said in announcing the award.

Prior recipients of the prize, granted by a non-governmental committee composed mainly of scholars, include former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Russian President Vladimir Putin. None has come to claim the prize in person.

The award was hastily launched by a group of mainland academics with some official backing in 2010. It came after a decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Chinese writer Liu.

But in 2011, the prize hit a snag last year after the Ministry of Culture ordered the former organiser, a cultural NGO affiliated with the ministry, to disband over concerns it was poorly organised. The group later reorganised by registering in Hong Kong instead, which has separate jurisdiction from the mainland.

Mugabe, Africa’s oldest head of state, is a resilient leader who fought in a guerrilla war, has denounced the West, crushed or co-opted dissent at home and has been in power for 35 years with no clear successor.

His selection as head for one year of the 54-member African Union struck some as a poor precedent on a continent where democratic change has struggled for a foothold in many regions. Mugabe is also the rotating chief of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community.

Mugabe received only 36 of 76 votes, but was awarded the prize following a meeting of the committee’s 13-member review board. Other candidates included Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Mugabe received only 36 of 76 votes

This translates into 99.8% voter support in his elections back home

Perhaps like Saddam, ahmmedinajad or Gaddafi, history may well show Mugabe up not as a monster as he was portrayed by the west but as a global folk legend.

Kim Jong Un would kill for the Chinese Peace Prize, yes.

He may well yet get it.
You know N Korea is the only country on the planet where ganja is legal?

Those whom judge from one obstacle hit limit on their accustomed viewpoint indispensable.


(Thought I'd save you a job, Jeff.)

Originally Posted by cyrille

Those whom judge from one obstacle hit limit on their accustomed viewpoint indispensable.


(Thought I'd save you a job, Jeff.)

Absolutely nailed it!

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by cyrille

Those whom judge from one obstacle hit limit on their accustomed viewpoint indispensable.


(Thought I'd save you a job, Jeff.)

Absolutely nailed it!

Nice.

How did you do it, cyrille?

^ Yup. You're surrounded by over a billion and I'm surrounded by 7 million