One of the few moments of relief during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the tour de force performance of “Baghdad Bob” – AKA Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf — the Iraqi Minister of Information who provided ludicrous statements about the status of Saddam Hussein’s regime (always praise, he told us) and the progress of the American and coalition forces (who he claimed were committing suicide en masse at the city gates!).
Well, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has just deployed their own version of this guy. During the Foreign Ministry’s February 11 daily press briefing, spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu was asked about a court decision denying the intermediate appeal of Chinese literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison on Christmas Day for his role in writing and circulating a petition for democratic reform in China. His response: “There are no dissidents in China.” The Foreign Ministry then handed out stuffed tigers to all the journalists in attendance, wishing them all a Happy Lunar New Year.
