User:Nederlandse Leeuw/ecp

An empty chair protest is a symbolic act to protest the absence of a speaker at a public event. The speaker is usually an activist who is detained or otherwise physically prevented from travelling to the event to speak or to receive an award in honour of their activism.

Examples

 * The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". Because he was serving his fourth prison sentence and his supporting wife Liu Xia was held under house arrest by the People's Republic of China, the Nobel Foundation and the Citizen Power Initiatives for China decided to display two empty chairs at the award ceremony on 10 December 2010 in Oslo, and the Nobel Peace Prize was laid own on Liu Xiabo's empty chair.