Associated journalists in Belarus and Georgia, Serbian students and Aid Cerfers and journalists in Gaza will be awarded the EU’s highest rights award on Wednesday.
The Sakharov Prize, organized in 1988 and named after the Soviet Deideider Andrei Sakharov, is given every year to individuals or organizations to recognize that they fight for human rights or democracy.
Three cooling groups working this year: Punished Georgian journalist and editor of Mzia Amaghlobeli and Pulal-Belarusian Blogy Andrzej Poczobut; Journalists and journalists in Gaza; and the Serbian student movement that shook the country for almost a year.
Political parties in Parliament and certain vendors can nominate contenders for the prize, which comes with 50,000-euro ($58,000) and will be awarded at a Parliament ceremony on December 16.
The LAUREATE or Laureate will be decided at a meeting of the seven Chamberber political parties – by consensus or by vote if necessary.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and her ally, former president Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, were last year’s winners. Machado went on to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The candidates for this year’s election are as follows.
– Convicted journalists –
Georgian jailer Mzia Amaghlobeli has emerged as a journalistic icon in what critics see as a slide towards authoritarianism in the Black Sea nation.
This 50-year-old meeting sparked an investigation into the use of money and the abuse of positions by his private chambers in Tulebi and Netgazeti.
Despite appeals from Georgian and international rights groups to have him released, a court in August sentenced him to two years in prison on charges of using “resistance, threats or violence” against an official.
It was selected alongside Amaghlobeli by the Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, a writer for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
Belarus sentenced poczobut to eight years in prison in February 2023 over his critical reports.
He had covered the massive protests against the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 and refused to leave the country after issuing a crackdown on the crackdown, motivating hundreds and overwhelming many critics.
The two convicted journalists are seen as strong arguments, supported by the main parliamentary group of the conservative ECP, and the hard-line ECR.
– Serbian student movement –
For nearly a year, the student-led movement has drawn hundreds of thousands to the streets of Serbian cities, in the largest demonstrations since the fall of Nationalist Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
The move came after 16 people were killed in November last year when a canopy was cut over the entrance to a newly renovated railway station in Vous sad, Serbia.
Students barricaded their universities and took to the streets with a seditious banner, demanding systematic reform in a country ranked 105th out of 180 in Transparency International’s Fraud Index.
From the beginning, the movement followed a strict principle of direct democracy, decisions made collectively through small assemblies.
For that reason, they were taken because of the prize as an organization – proposed by the Centrist of the Parliamentary Committee, and seen as a possible intelligence.
– Gaza Aid Workers –
The groups left by the Parliament were nominated by Palestinian journalists, the Red Crescent and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, URWA, for the top prize.
Palestinian journalists have reported the killing of 252 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since the start of Israel’s crackdown on Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
But the proposal will be up against wider support as the 27 EU nations are sharply divided between those that support Israel and those that sympathize with the Palestinians.
Burns-av / raz / EC / JXB / ST
