Nobel’s shining stars who lost their lustre

Other laureates have been accused of committing flagrant faux pas.

Lech Walesa — the founder of the Soviet Union’s first independent trade union Solidarity and who won the 1983 Peace Prize — has repeatedly been accused of collaborating with Communist secret services.

Rejecting the allegations in 2009, he threatened to leave Poland and return his awards.

Long before him, Italian pacifist Ernesto Moneta was criticised for having supported his country’s decision to go to war against the Ottoman Empire in 1911, four years after receiving his Nobel.

Austria’s Bertha von Suttner, the 1905 laureate and a close friend of Alfred Nobel’s “proposed that Moneta lose his Nobel Peace Prize and his titles in the peace movement”, recalls historian Ivar Libaek in the collective work “The Nobel Peace Prize: One Hundred Years for Peace”.

– ‘No one’s perfect’ –

Twice during the post-war period, the choice of Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been so explosive that some committee members have resigned.

One quit in 1994 to protest against the choice of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat alongside Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, a year after the signing of the Oslo Accords.

Two others stepped down in 1973 when US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese peace negotiator Le Duc Tho were honoured for reaching a ceasefire — albeit short-lived — in Vietnam.

Each time, the debate has smouldered for years.

“He won the Nobel but he dishonoured it. Whether he returns it or not doesn’t matter, it must burn his hand when he touches it,” fumed former Nobel committee member Berge Furre in 2009 about Peres.

The career politician, who was Israel’s president at the time, had defended an Israeli attack on a Gaza school that left more than 40 people dead.

While Le Duc Tho immediately declined his prize, Kissinger accepted his but chose not to go to Oslo to pick it up for fear of massive protests. In 1975, he even offered to hand it back.

The committee refused. The Nobel Foundation’s statutes do not allow for it. Neither do they allow for a prize to be withdrawn.

“None of the Nobel laureates is perfect,” Lundestad said.

“Many of them probably feel an extra responsibility to act in an exemplary fashion, but once the prize has been awarded, the committee can’t do anything anyway.”

This year’s prize will be announced on October 6.