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• Row over Nobel's decision to award dissident Liu Xiaobo
• Activists in China barred from attending ceremony
Supporters of this year's Nobel peace prize, which honours a jailed Chinese dissident, are "clowns" perpetrating a farce, the foreign ministry in Beijing said today.
China is furious at the decision to give Liu Xiaobo the prestigious award, which will be celebrated at a ceremony in Norway on Friday. He is serving an 11-year sentence for incitement to subvert state power for his co-authorship of Charter 08, a call for democratic reforms.
The authorities have placed his wife, Liu Xia, and other supporters under house arrest and have barred other activists and dissidents from leaving the country, apparently for fear they will attend the event.
A foreign ministry, spokeswoman Jiang Yu, said Liu's supporters were fundamentally opposed to China's development and wanted to interfere in the country's politics and legal system. She added: "We will not be pressured by clowns."
The Norwegian Nobel committee said China and 18 other countries have declined invitations to the ceremony "for various reasons". The others are Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco.
China had written to diplomats in Oslo urging them to boycott the ceremony and warning of "consequences" if they did not do so, but 44 countries will send representatives. Not all countries are invited as not all have missions in Norway.
A committee member said the Chinese embassy in Oslo is returning all correspondence unopened.
According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, all invited countries sent representatives last year, when Barack Obama won. The previous year, about 10 countries did not attend the ceremony for Martti Ahtisaari.
The event would normally be marked by the handover of the Nobel gold medal, a diploma and prize money worth 10m kronor (£1.04m), but organisers say that will not happen this year because only close family can collect the prize on a winner's behalf. China is unlikely to let Liu's relatives attend.
The organisers said yesterday they would hold the traditional torch parade from Oslo city hall to the Grand Hotel. Normally the winner appears on the balcony of the hotel to greet the public, but this year a picture of Liu will be projected on to the building.
Another dissident under tightened restrictions gave a staunch defence of Liu in an article published today by the New York Times. Bao Tong said the signatories of Charter 08 were "resolved to protect the republic, not to subvert her".
Bao was the most senior official jailed over the 1989 pro-reform protests in Tiananmen Square, in which Liu Xiaobo played an important role. He lives under round-the-clock surveillance and his telephone was cut off shortly after the announcement of the award.
He added in his article: "There are indeed people who have subverted the People's Republic of China, and two quite famously. The first was Mao, who boasted of being 'bound by no laws or heavenly constraints'. Another was Deng, who initiated and led the Tiananmen crackdown. Mr Liu was convicted for attempting to save the republic after its principles and ideals had been stripped away. That is all."
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