The Hill News

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) weighed in on the controversy surrounding Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday night, saying that countries should resist pressure by the Chinese government not to attend the awards ceremony.

"US & other countries shld resist pressure by China to boycott #NobelPeacePrize award to Chinese dissident who called for Democratic reforms," he tweeted.

Xiaobo, a pro-democracy activist, is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence in China for subversion. Reperesentatives of the Chinese government have called him a "criminal" and have said that those countries that acknowledge his award will "bear the consequences."

So far, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia and Lithuania have said their ambassadors will attend the awards ceremony regardless. France, as of Monday, was still "consulting its neighbors," hoping for a unified response.

The U.S. has not received a letter from the Chinese government asking it to boycott the award.