2009 Nobel Peace Prize committee for a "hideous display of cynical politics". Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation in Australia, questioned the award. "Perhaps the Nobel organisation wants to give him a magic wand. I think the guy is full of promise, but I don't think the promise has been realised yet particularly in regards the Middle East." In Asia and the Middle East: Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said that Obama was the "appropriate" person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. "His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at
2010 Nobel Peace Prize celebration dinner in Beijing, attended by 20 people, was broken up by police, and the attendees were detained. The Chinese media avoided the story of Liu's Peace Prize, in marked contrast with their previous announcements of other recipients of Nobel Prizes. The official Xinhua News Agency downplayed all but the literature prize, and most other mainland news portals followed the Xinhua lead; popular internet portals such as Sina.com and NetEase deleted pages dedicated to stories related to all five Nobel Prizes. According to a well-informed Twitter user, cited by the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, the