The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commonly known as the Sakharov Prize, is an honorary award for individuals or groups who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought. [1] Named after Russian scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the prize was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament.
A shortlist of nominees is drawn up annually by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Committee on Development. The MEPs who make up those committees then select a shortlist in September. [2] Thereafter, the final choice is given to The European Parliament's Conference of Presidents (President and political group's leaders) and the laureate's name is announced late in October. The prize is awarded in a ceremony at the Parliament's Strasbourg hemicycle (round chamber) in December. [3] [2] The prize includes a monetary award of €50,000. [3]
The first prize was awarded jointly to South African Nelson Mandela and Russian Anatoly Marchenko. The 1990 award was given to Aung San Suu Kyi, but she could not receive it until 2013 as a result of her political imprisonment in Burma. [4] The prize has also been awarded to organisations, the first being the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in 1992. Five Sakharov laureates were subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Malala Yousafzai, Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad. [5]
Razan Zaitouneh (2011) was kidnapped in 2013 and is still missing. [6] Nasrin Sotoudeh (2012) was released from prison in September 2013, [7] but is still barred from leaving Iran, along with fellow 2012 laureate Jafar Panahi. [8] The 2017 prize was awarded to the Democratic Opposition in Venezuela, under boycott of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left. [9] [10]
† | Indicates a posthumous award |
---|---|
Year | Image | Recipient | Nationality | Notes | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1988 | Nelson Mandela | South Africa | Anti-apartheid activist and later first President of South Africa | [11] | |
Anatoly Marchenko † | Soviet Union | Soviet dissident, author, and human rights activist | [12] | ||
1989 | Alexander Dubček | Czechoslovakia | Slovak politician, attempted to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring | [11] | |
1990 | Aung San Suu Kyi | Myanmar | At the time she received the award, Suu Kyi was an opposition politician and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, known for her peaceful struggle against military rule in Myanmar. She personally accepted the award in 2013, after she was released from 15 years of house arrest. In 2020, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament formally suspended Suu Kyi from the Sakharov Prize Community due to her role in the atrocities against the Rohingya people, but did not revoke the prize itself. | [13] [14] [15] [16] | |
1991 | - | Adem Demaçi | Yugoslavia | Kosovo Albanian politician and long-term political prisoner | [11] |
1992 | Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo | Argentina | Association of Argentine mothers whose children disappeared during the Dirty War | [13] | |
1993 | Oslobođenje | Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina | Popular newspaper that defended Bosnia and Herzegovina as a multi-ethnic state | [13] | |
1994 | Taslima Nasrin | Bangladesh | Feminist author and former doctor | [13] | |
1995 | Leyla Zana | Turkey | Politician of Kurdish descent from Southeastern Turkey, who was imprisoned for 15 years for being a member of the PKK | [11] | |
1996 | Wei Jingsheng | China | Activist in the Chinese democracy movement | [13] | |
1997 | Salima Ghezali | Algeria | Journalist and writer, activist for women's rights, human rights, and democracy in Algeria | [13] | |
1998 | Ibrahim Rugova | FR Yugoslavia | Kosovo Albanian politician and first President of Kosovo | [11] | |
1999 | Xanana Gusmão | East Timor | Former militant and later first President of East Timor | [17] | |
2000 | - | ¡Basta Ya! | Spain | Organisation uniting individuals of various political positions against terrorism | [18] |
2001 | Nurit Peled-Elhanan | Israel | Peace activist | [11] | |
Izzat Ghazzawi | Palestine | Writer and professor | |||
Dom Zacarias Kamwenho | Angola | Archbishop and peace activist | |||
2002 | Oswaldo Payá | Cuba | Political activist and dissident | [19] | |
2003 | Kofi Annan | Ghana | Nobel Peace Prize recipient and seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations | [11] | |
United Nations | International | ||||
2004 | - | Belarusian Association of Journalists | Belarus | Non-governmental organisation "aiming to ensure freedom of speech and rights of receiving and distributing information and promoting professional standards of journalism" | [20] |
2005 | Ladies in White | Cuba | Opposition movement, relatives of jailed dissidents | [21] | |
Reporters Without Borders | International | France-based non-governmental organisation advocating freedom of the press | [21] | ||
Hauwa Ibrahim | Nigeria | Human rights lawyer | [21] | ||
2006 | Alaksandar Milinkievič | Belarus | Politician chosen by United Democratic Forces of Belarus as the joint candidate of the opposition in the 2006 presidential election | [22] | |
2007 | Salih Mahmoud Osman | Sudan | Human rights lawyer | [13] | |
2008 | Hu Jia | China | Activist and dissident | [23] | |
2009 | - | Memorial | Russia | International civil rights and historical society | [24] |
2010 | Guillermo Fariñas | Cuba | Doctor, journalist, and political dissident | [25] | |
2011 [lower-alpha 1] | Asmaa Mahfouz | Egypt | Five representatives of the Arab people, in recognition and support of their drive for freedom and human rights | [26] | |
Ahmed al-Senussi | Libya | ||||
Razan Zaitouneh | Syria | ||||
Ali Farzat | |||||
Mohamed Bouazizi † | Tunisia | ||||
2012 | Jafar Panahi | Iran | Iranian activists, Sotoudeh is a lawyer and Panahi is a film director. | [27] [28] | |
Nasrin Sotoudeh | |||||
2013 | Malala Yousafzai | Pakistan | Campaigner for women's rights and education | [29] | |
2014 | Denis Mukwege | Democratic Republic of the Congo | Gynecologist treating victims of gang rape | [30] | |
2015 | Raif Badawi | Saudi Arabia | Saudi Arabian writer, activist, and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals | [31] [lower-alpha 2] | |
2016 | Nadia Murad | Iraq | Yazidi human rights activists and former abductees of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant | [32] | |
Lamiya Aji Bashar | |||||
2017 | Democratic opposition in Venezuela | Venezuela | Members of the country's National Assembly and all political prisoners as listed by Foro Penal Venezolano represented by Leopoldo López, Julio Borges, Antonio Ledezma, Daniel Ceballos , Yon Goicoechea, Lorent Saleh, Alfredo Ramos and Andrea González. The award was seen as rewarding the "courage of student activists and protesters in face of repression by Nicolas Maduro's government" [33] and boycotted by the European United Left–Nordic Green Left parliamentary group. [10] | [34] | |
2018 | Oleg Sentsov | Ukraine | Film director, symbol of the struggle for the release of political prisoners held in Russia and around the world | [35] | |
2019 | Ilham Tohti | China | Uyghur economist, scholar, and human rights activist | [36] | |
2020 | Democratic opposition in Belarus | Belarus | Democratic opposition of Belarus represented by the Coordination Council, an initiative of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Svetlana Alexievich, Maria Kalesnikava, Volha Kavalkova and Veranika Tsapkala, and political and civil society figures - Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Ales Bialiatski, Sergei Dylevsky, Stsiapan Putsila and Mikola Statkevich. | [37] [lower-alpha 3] [lower-alpha 4] | |
2021 | Alexei Navalny | Russia | Opposition politician and anti-corruption activist | [39] | |
2022 | The Ukrainian people | Ukraine | Awarded to Ukrainians who are "protecting democracy, freedom and rule of law" following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. [40] | [41] | |
2023 | Mahsa Jina Amini † | Iran | Mahsa Amini's death under suspicious circumstances led to widespread protests, often under the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom. [42] | [42] | |
Woman, Life, Freedom movement | |||||
2024 | María Corina Machado | Venezuela | Opposition politicians | [43] | |
Edmundo González |
DawAung San Suu Kyi, sometimes abbreviated to Suu Kyi, is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and democracy activist who served as state counsellor of Myanmar and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since the party's founding in 1988 and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s.
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma, is a country in Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has a population of about 55 million. It is bordered by India to its west, Bangladesh to its southwest, China to its northeast, Laos and Thailand to its east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to its south and southwest. The country's capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon.
Myanmar operates de jure as a unitary assembly-independent presidential republic under its 2008 constitution. On 1 February 2021, Myanmar's military took over the government in a coup, causing ongoing anti-coup protests.
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Turkey, Iran, China, and Turkmenistan. In the Western world, there are historical examples of people who have been considered and have considered themselves dissidents, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties such as freedom of speech.
The National League for Democracy is a deregistered liberal democratic political party in Myanmar. It became the country's ruling party after a landslide victory in the 2015 general election but was overthrown in a coup d'état in February 2021 following another landslide election victory in 2020.
Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an assistant director for fellow Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon (1995). The film won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the first major award an Iranian film won at Cannes.
The Rafto Foundation for Human Rights was established in 1986 in memory of Thorolf Rafto, a professor of economic history at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and a human rights activist. The main objective of the Rafto Foundation is the promotion of freedom of political expression and enterprise. The work of the foundation consists of different educational and informative projects, including the annual award of the Rafto Prize (Raftoprisen) each November. The foundation is based in Bergen, Norway and run by a small team of professionals and volunteers.
The Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize (Raftoprisen) is a human rights award established in the memory of the Norwegian human rights activist, Thorolf Rafto.
Paw Oo Tun, better known by his alias Min Ko Naing, is a leading democracy activist and dissident from Myanmar. He has spent most of the years since 1988 imprisoned by the state for his opposition activities. The New York Times has described him as Burma's "most influential opposition figure after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi".
Isabelle Annie J. Durant is a Belgian politician of the Ecolo party who served as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 2017 to 2021 and as acting Secretary-General of the organisation from 2021 to 2022.
PEN Canada is one of the 148 centres of PEN International. Founded in 1926, it has a membership of over 1,000 writers and supporters who campaign on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned and exiled for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Alexander Myint San Aung Aris is the elder son of Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris. He is also a grandson of Aung San, who is credited with achieving the independence of Myanmar. He has been representing his mother, who has been detained by the military junta for years; he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for her, and on many other awards and occasions, he has represented her.
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer in Iran. She has represented imprisoned Iranian opposition activists and politicians following the disputed June 2009 Iranian presidential elections and prisoners sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were minors. Her clients have included journalist Isa Saharkhiz, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Heshmat Tabarzadi. She has also represented women arrested for appearing in public without a hijab, which is a punishable offense in Iran. Nasrin Sotoudeh was the subject of Nasrin, a 2020 documentary filmed in secret in Iran about Sotoudeh's "ongoing battles for the rights of women, children and minorities." In 2021, she was named as of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World. She was released on a medical furlough in July 2021.
The Lady is a 2011 British biographical film directed by Luc Besson, starring Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her late husband Michael Aris. Yeoh called the film "a labour of love" but also confessed it had felt intimidating for her to play the Nobel laureate.
Ales Viktaravich Bialiatski is a Russian-born Belarusian pro-democracy activist and prisoner of conscience known for his work with the Viasna Human Rights Centre. An activist for Belarusian independence and democracy since the early 1980s, Bialiatski is a founding member of Viasna and the Belarusian Popular Front, serving as leader of the latter from 1996 to 1999. He is also a member of the Coordination Council of the Belarusian opposition. He has been called "a pillar of the human rights movement in Eastern Europe" by The New York Times, and recognised as a prominent pro-democracy activist in Belarus.
The 2011–2015 Myanmar political reforms were a series of political, economic and administrative reforms in Myanmar undertaken by the military-backed government. These reforms include the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and subsequent dialogues with her, establishment of the National Human Rights Commission, general amnesties of more than 200 political prisoners, institution of new labour laws that allow labour unions and strikes, relaxation of press censorship, and regulations of currency practices. As a consequence of the reforms, ASEAN has approved Myanmar's bid for the chairmanship in 2014. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Myanmar on 1 December 2011, to encourage further progress; it was the first visit by a Secretary of State in more than fifty years. United States President Barack Obama visited one year later, becoming the first US president to visit the country.
General elections were held in Myanmar on 8 November 2015, with the National League for Democracy winning a supermajority of seats in the combined national parliament. Voting occurred in all constituencies, excluding seats appointed by the military, to select Members of Assembly to seats in both the upper house and the lower house of the Assembly of the Union, and State and Region Hluttaws. Ethnic Affairs Ministers were also elected by their designated electorates on the same day, although only select ethnic minorities in particular states and regions were entitled to vote for them.
Taxi, also known as Taxi Tehran, is a 2015 Iranian docufiction starring and directed by Jafar Panahi. The film premiered in competition at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI Prize. In 2010, Panahi was banned from making films and travelling for 20 years, so his niece Hana Saeidi, who also appears in the film, collected the award on his behalf.
General elections were held in Myanmar on 8 November 2020. Voting occurred in all constituencies, excluding seats appointed by or reserved for the military, to elect members to both the upper house — the Amyotha Hluttaw and the lower house — the Pyithu Hluttaw of the Assembly of the Union, as well as State and Regional Hluttaws (legislatures). Ethnic Affairs Ministers were also elected by their designated electorates on the same day, although only select ethnic minorities in particular states and regions were entitled to vote for them. A total of 1,171 national, state, and regional seats were contested in the election, with polling having taken place in all townships, including areas considered conflict zones and self-administered regions.