Special to WorldTribune.com

The Chinese alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to “a war-monger … and a sadist who delights in the misery of the people,” said one critic of the award.

But China defended the honor it bestowed on 91-year-old Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, saying that “ever since Robert Mugabe was sworn in as the president of Zimbabwe in the 1980s, he has worked hard to bring political and economic order to the country and to improve the welfare of the Zimbabwean people by overcoming hardship.”

Mugabe was apparently more deserving of the award, which is called the Confucius Peace Prize, than other candidates such as South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The officials who chose Mugabe said he was responsible for “injecting fresh energy” into the global quest for harmony.

Qiao Damo, the Confucius committee’s chairman, told the Guardian that “if Zimbabwe did not have Mugabe as its president, the country would be facing great difficulty – even public security might be in danger.”

Those who have witnessed and experienced Mugabe’s brutal reign, however, say the award is nothing more than a sick joke. China, they say, is lauding a man who has used violence against and torture of his foes to maintain a 35-year grip on power.

“The rule of Mugabe is paved with blood, violence, arson and cruelty,” said Gorden Moyo, the secretary general of the People’s Democratic Party.

“The messianic ideology of our time, known as Postmodernism, has its own dogmas of faith,” wrote WorldTribune.com contributor Alexander Maistrovoy (Nov. 18, 2014).

“Dogma number one: Political correctness, targeting white racism, is the rule, and the Third World is always right. There is only white racism. There are no such concepts as black racism and colored racism.

“In Zimbabwe, Ndebele tribe people suffer from discrimination much more than whites in Mugabe’s hierarchical system.

“All this is irrelevant to the overweening rectitude of Political Correctness Dogma.”

The Confucius award came into being in 2010 after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, infuriating leaders in Beijing.

Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro are former winners of the Confucius award.

Along with a gold trophy of Confucius, Mugabe gets 500,000 yuan ($78,652.84 U.S.)

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