NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, July 15, 2017, 5:00 AM

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a prominent dissident enraged one of the most powerful countries in the world, a single-party, totalitarian regime .

The Nobel committee was denounced by the Party and regime, which proceeded to establish a rival, state-sponsored award. Henceforth no citizen was to receive the foreign Nobel.

The laureate, already in custody, was denied permission to travel to Oslo. He never saw freedom again, dying years later under secret police guard.

Where and when was this? Who was the man?

It was Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Pacifist Carl von Ossietzky received the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, prompting Hitler to create the German National Prize for Art and Science, which went to Alfred Rosenberg, later hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Peace laureate von Ossietzky died in 1938 after suffering from maltreatment in a concentration camp.

And it is Communist China today. Pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, prompting Beijing to begin the Confucius Peace Prize. Annual winners since then have included Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe, a trifecta of tyrants.

Liu remained locked up until his death Thursday. Even when he was dying of liver cancer and offered advanced treatment in the West, his jailers would not let him go.

Freedom eventually came to Germany. Someday, may it come to China.

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Martyrs of freedom: China kept Nobel Peace Prize winner locked up until his death - New York Daily News