Nobel Peace Prize: Russian laureate 'told to turn down award'

 

A Russian human rights activist has told the BBC that he was ordered to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize by the Russian authorities.

Yan Rachinsky is from Memorial, one of three joint winners of this year's accolade, alongside the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties, and Ales Bialiatski, who is in prison in Belarus.

Mr Rachinsky chose to accept the award and told Stephen Sackur of BBC's HARDtalk: "In today's Russia no-one's personal safety is guaranteed".

For more than 30 years, Memorial worked on uncovering the fates of the victims of Soviet political repression. It also exposed human rights abuses in present-day Russia, before being forced to close.

The Nobel Peace Prize | Start Here

 

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize is going to two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov.

How are the winners chosen? Why have some past laureates been so controversial?

And 120 years after it first started, does the Nobel Peace Prize even matter?

What this year’s Nobel Prize says about the global media climate

 

Who are the journalists who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year and what’s the message to international media? Plus, a look at the US military-gaming complex.

For the first time in 85 years, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two journalists. What does this tell us about the state of global journalism?

Nobel Peace Prize for journalists in Russia and Philippines

 

The right to freedom of expression has been recognised by this year's Nobel Peace Prize, which has been awarded to two journalists known for their hard-hitting investigations which have angered their countries' powerful elites and leaders.

Is there a broader meaning behind the WFP’s Nobel Prize?

 

The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize highlights an agency working at the intersection of war and hunger.

It works extensively in war zones and with refugees around the world.

In highlighting the agency’s work, the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited it as a “driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”.

Donald Trump Asked Shinzo Abe Nominate Him For The Nobel Peace Prize: Asahi Shinbun

For all the derision, hate and attempts to erase the Presidency of Barrack Obama by Donald Trump and his army of Mini Me's. Isn't it interesting that he, Donald Trump seeks the same recognition and acceptance of world leaders, major international organizations and decision makers that was afforded President Obama.   So, the worlds most powerful political leader, a person so needed and insecure that he requires his staff to provide him with aa daily round-up of news which portrays him in the most positive manner sought out and asked Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his supposed diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea over the dismantling of its nuclear arsenal.  Even though no such agreement exists. 

   Acceding to a request from Washington, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize around autumn for engaging with North Korea, Japanese government sources said Feb. 16.

According to the sources, the U.S. government "informally" asked Tokyo to nominate Trump after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June, the first-ever summit between the two countries.

At a news conference in the White House on Feb. 15, Trump revealed that Abe gave him a copy of a five-page letter the prime minister sent to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize.

The deadline for nominating candidates for the prize is February every year. College professors and members of the parliament in each country, as well as former Nobel laureates, are eligible to recommend candidates.

China says UN criticism of human rights record is 'politically driven'

The Chinese government doesn't understand irony.  How else does one explain the headline above. 

In 2010  Liu Xiaobo a human rights lawyer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  He was promptly jailed and died in prison all for the crime of advocating for the rights of his fellow citizens. 

Xinjiang  a province in western China which has a large Muslim population which the Communist party has tried to suppress, if not forcing them to give up their religious beliefs.  Recently clear evidence has been presented that shows China has created a large number of interment camps with an estimated population of 1 million prisoners.     

China has defended its human rights record after the first UN assessment since 2013 criticised the mass detention of lawyers and the continuing use of internment camps.

Beijing rejected claims made during the UN Human Rights Council’s universal periodic review that human rights in China had deteriorated, saying that some UN member countries were deliberately disregarding “the remarkable achievements made by China”.

During the review, UN member states singled out China’s policies in Xinjiang and Tibet and its treatment of human rights defenders. It called on Beijing to release detained Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, protect religious freedoms in Tibet, and stop harassing and detaining human rights lawyers.

Activists say as many as a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps in Xinjiang, where they are forced to undergo political indoctrination.

Donald And His Prize

Malala Yousafzai returns to Pakistan for first time since Taliban shooting

Nobel peace prize recipient expected to spend four days in her native country, including a meeting with the prime minister

The Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai has returned to Pakistan, in her first visit to her native country since she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for advocating education for girls in 2012.

Precise details of her itinerary have been “kept secret in view of the sensitivity surrounding the visit”, a government official said of the trip, which is expected to last four days and include a meeting with the prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

Accompanied by her parents, the 20-year-old Yousafzai was escorted through Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto international airport under tight security, according to still photographs broadcast on local television.

Malala has become a global symbol for human rights and a vocal campaigner for girls’ education since a gunman boarded her school bus in the Swat valley on 9 October 2012, asked “Who is Malala?” and shot her.

Considering the continued threat she's under for the Taliban it's rather extraordinary that she would return.  That said it is home and she has stated she missed the mountains, rivers and valleys of the region where she lived until the age of 14. 

Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo dies – video

Political prisoner, activist and Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo died on Thursday after suffering from liver cancer. He was diagnosed in May while serving an 11-year prison sentence, but was granted medical parole last month. Artist Ai Weiwei and US House minority speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, expressed their sadness at Liu’s death

• Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and political prisoner, dies at 61 in Chinese custody

The Peacemaker With The Peace Prize And His Drones

Victim of Obama's first drone strike: 'I am the living example of what drones are'

Faheem Qureshi was 14 when a drone attack on his home left him with horrific injuries, several family members dead and his dreams for the future in tatters


Faheem Qureshi’s uncles sat with their neighbors, chatting, cracking jokes and sipping tea, in their family’s lounge for male guests. Qureshi, almost 14, stood nearby, bored and restless, thinking about when he could go to the nearby playground where he and the other Ziraki village kids played badminton and cricket.

It had been a long day – Friday prayers, a food shopping errand at his mother’s behest, hosting – but also a happy occasion, as people stopped by to welcome an uncle home to North Waziristan, in tribal Pakistan, from a work excursion to the United Arab Emirates. Then he heard a sound like a plane taking off.

About two seconds later, the missile punched a hole through the lounge. Qureshi remembers feeling like his body was on fire. He ran outside, wanting to throw water on his face, but his priority was escape. The boy could not see.

Even though no known terrorists or terrorists sympathizers were killed in this attack the ever compliant media in the US would report that "several terrorists militants" had been killed even though most of the victims of these attacks seem to be innocent  civilizations.

 “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. In those rare instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to minimize such risk to non-combatants in the future.

“Although we will not comment on specific cases, were non-combatants killed or injured in a US strike, condolence or other ex gratia payments, such as solatia, may be available for those injured and the families of those killed,” Price told the Guardian.

“Are we not the same human beings as these two westerners who were killed?” Qureshi asked in his first interview with an American journalist, conducted through translation. The interview was facilitated by the human rights group Reprieve.

Here's the best part: “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. If they truly took these of incidents seriously  there would have been an investigation into what happened and how it came to be that this young man's' home was attacked. Further there the U.S. government should have provided monetary support to the family for those lost, injured and the house that was destroyed in the mistaken attack.  That will never happen.

Nobel Peace Prize for Tunisia mediators

Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet awarded Nobel Peace Prize for role in democratic transition

The Nobel committee said the group of civil society organisations had made a "decisive contribution" to democracy after the 2011 revolution.

It said it helped establish a political process when the country "was on the brink of civil war".

Tunisia's uprising was the first and most successful of the Arab Spring.

While other countries - Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria - either reverted to authoritarian rule or descended into violence and chaos, only Tunisia has managed a successful transition to democracy.

Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet

The surprise winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize has played a key role in mediating between the different parties in the country's post-Arab Spring government.

The Quartet is credited with creating a national dialogue between the country's Islamist and secular coalition parties amid deepening political and economic crisis in 2013.