Fidel Castro is the winner of this year’s Confucius Peace Prize, which has been awarded in China by a group “overseen by China’s culture ministry” since 2010 (the year that Chinese dissident Liu Xiabao won the Nobel Peace Prize). From AFP:
A Cuban exchange student received this year’s award on Castro’s behalf at a ceremony on Tuesday, one day before Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi accepted their Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
Castro stepped down from his role as Cuba’s president/dictator in 2006, succeeded by his brother, Raul. Oddly, other past winners of the Confucius Peace Prize include both Vladimir Putin (like Castro, an authoritarian whose choice was seemingly designed to tweak Western powers) and Taiwanese politician Lien Chan, who actually did contribute to international peace efforts by making a groundbreaking visit to China in 2005. (Chan did not accept the award.) Another winner, agricultural researcher Yuan Longping, has worked with the United Nations and is known for developing a high-yield strain of rice that has helped feed millions of people in areas of the world at high risk of famine.
