Nobel Peace Prize has distinct Western bias - Salceda

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines  – Albay Governor Joey Salceda yesterday said the Nobel Peace Prize has a distinct Western bias, noting that only 12 Asians have so far won the prestigious award in its 111-year history.

“The Nobel Peace Prize has a distinctly Western bias or, more accurately, has a non-Asian prejudice with only 12 Asian awardees so far in its 111 years’ history with 20 years of no winners,” Salceda said in an e-mail to The STAR.

This year, three women from Africa and the Middle East shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Salceda noted that in 1986, former President Corazon Aquino should have been recognized by the Nobel for “leading the non-violent restoration of liberal democracy in a Third World country through the People Power movement.” 

He said Asia accounts for 3.8 billion out of the total 6.8-billion world population and it was the colonial, imperial and mercantilist policies of Western countries that caused much of the conflict and poverty in Asia.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee this year honored “peace warrior” Leymah Gbowee, 39, who confronted armed forces in Liberia and demanded that they stop using rape of women as a weapon; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 72, who made history when she became Africa’s first woman president in 2005; and Tawakkul Karman, a 32-year-old activist who pushed for change in Yemen long before the Arab Spring.

In selecting Karman, the Nobel committee also recognized the Arab Spring movement championed by millions of anonymous activists from Tunisia to Syria. She is the first Arab woman to win the Peace Prize. The Nobel jury hailed the three “for their commitment to women’s rights in regions where oppression is common.”

The Nobel Committee honored women for the first time in seven years.

Salceda said the Asian Peace Prize awardees were Le Duc Tho (Vietnam, 1973); Eisaku Sato (Japan, 1974), Anwar Sadat (Egypt) and Menachem Begin (Israel) in 1978; Dalai Lama (Tibet, 1989); Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma, 1991); Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres (Israel) and Yasser Arafat (PLO) in 1994; Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta (East Timor) in 1996; Kim Dae Jung (South Korea, 2000); Shirin Ebadi (Iran, 2003); Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh) and the Grameen Bank (2006); and Liu Xiaobo (China, 2010).