Watch: Roberta Metsola Awards ‘Brave People Of Ukraine’ With 2022 Sakharov Prize
President of the EP Roberta Metsola has just announced that the “brave people of Ukraine” are the recipients of the 2022 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.
“For the past nine months, the European Parliament has seen Ukrainians heroically defending their liberty, their homes and their families. But the Ukrainian people are also risking their lives for Europe, to safeguard the values that we all believe in: freedom, democracy and rule of law,” Metsola said.
The brave people of Ukraine are represented by their president, elected leaders and civil society.
Metsola explained that there was consensus within the Conference of Presidents on this choice.
“There is no one more deserving of this award.”
She went on to explain that this award is for those Ukrainians “fighting on the ground, those forced to flee, those who have lost family and friends, and for all of those stand up and fight for who and what they believe in.”
“I know that the brace people of Ukraine will not give up and neither will we,” Metsola fiercely concluded.
The annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought has been awarded to individuals and organisations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms since 1988.
It is named in honour of Soviet physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov and the prize money is €50,000. In 2021, the prize went to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for his fight against corruption and the Kremlin’s abuses of human rights.
The other candidates for this year’s edition of one of the European Union’s top prizes was Julian Assange and The Truth Commission in Colombia.
Assange is one of the co-founders of the WikiLeaks association. He provided world-leading newspapers with documents concerning war crimes, arbitrary detentions, human rights violations and torture.
As a result, he been held in prison in the UK and is currently facing extradition to the United States to stand trial on charges of espionage and computer misuse.
Meanwhile, The Truth Commission in Colombia is an institution created under a 2016 peace agreement to end the Colombian civil war in 2016. It aims to establish the facts about the human rights violations during the conflict and to advocate for the rights of millions of its victims.
The nomination pays tribute to the civil war victims and is described as an opportunity to support the peace process.
What do you think about this important moment?
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