The Sakharov Prize | Taking a stand, loud and clear

The Sakharov prize, established in 1988, is named for the nuclear physicist Andrei D. Sakharov who led the Soviet Union’s development of the hydrogen bomb and then became a tireless crusader for human rights. 

It was set up in 1988 to honour individuals and organisations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The prize recognises achievement in defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms, particularly the right to free expression, safeguarding the right of minorities, respect for international law and development of democracy and implementation on the rule of law.

The prize is awarded to persons, associations or organisations irrespective of their nationality, place of residence or seat.

Nominations for the Sakharov Prize can be made by political groups or by at least 40 MEPs. Based on the nominations, the foreign affairs and development committees vote on a shortlist of three finalists. 

After that the Conference of Presidents, made up of the EP President and the leaders of the political groups, select the winner. The winner receives a certificate and a cheque for €50,000. 

Past winners include Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Ky and Kofi Annan. In 2013, the prize went to Malala Yousafzai, a teenage Pakistani activist for women’s rights who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2014, it was awarded to Denis Mukwege, a gynecologic surgeon in the Democratic Republic of Congo who has devoted himself to helping victims of sexual violence during wartime.

Who is Raif Badawi?

Raif Badawi is a 31-year-old Saudi Arabian blogger and advocate of freedom of thought and expression who two years ago was found guilty of breaking the country’s technology laws and of insulting Islam.

Badawi founded and ran the Saudi Liberals, and later the Free Saudi Liberal Network, online forums for the discussion of religion and politics in the conservative country, and had a thousand registered users when he was detained for a day in 2008 and interrogated on suspicion of apostasy, a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.  

Subsequently, he was banned indefinitely from leaving Saudi Arabia, his bank accounts were frozen and his wife’s family attempted to force a divorce. A fatwa was put on his head by a hardline imam.

Badawi valiantly continued to air his moderately liberal views. He wrote, amongst other issues, in defence of the right to freedom of thought and expression and called for a society open to the views of others. 

A free thinker in an Arab society whimpering under the theocratic yoke, Badawi wrote, just needed to express an opinion to bring down on their head a fatwa. This, he feared, would cause the brightest minds to flee. 

A voice of liberalism in Saudi Arabia, Badawi was engaging with his writings, online and in traditional media, in enlightening his community and defeating ignorance, eroding the untouchability of the clergy and promoting respect for freedom of expression, women’s rights and those of minorities and poor people in Saudi Arabia, as he wrote from prison in 2015 in a preface to a book of writings of his salvaged despite the permanent closure of his websites. 

Badawi was arrested in 2012 and indicted on several charges including apostasy, though no court has ruled on the latter. He was convicted for establishing a forum hosting blasphemous commentary and blasphemous online posts, and sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in 2013, and then resentenced to 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison plus a fine of a million riyals (€226 000) in 2014. 

He was flogged 50 times before a chanting crowd in front of a Jeddah mosque in January 2015 in what was meant to be the first in a series of 1,000 floggings to be carried out over twenty weeks. 

Doctors who examined him after the first, fast lashings found wounds so deep, they judged he would not survive another flogging. The international outcry and concerns about his health have so far stayed further lashings, but his sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2015.  

He is banned from using any media outlets and from travelling abroad for 10 years after his release from prison. 

Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar and their three children live in Canada, having fled Saudi Arabia in 2013 because of anonymous death threats. In prison Raif Badawi has found understanding of the humanity of those he is incarcerated with.

2015 nominations

Political prisoners in Venezuela as well as the democratic opposition in Venezuela, embodied by the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, an election coalition formed in 2008 to unify the opposition to president Hugo Chávez’s political party. Nominated by the European People’s Party and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) MEPs Dita Charanzová and Fernando Maura Barandiarán.

Edna Adan Ismail, a Somali activist for the abolition of female genital mutilation and a former government minister. She is the director and founder of the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa in Somaliland (Somalia). Nominated by the Eurosceptic political grouping EFDD.

Boris Nemtsov a Russian physicist, former deputy prime minister and opposition politician who was assassinated in Moscow in February 2015. Nominated by ALDE.

Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot and a member of the Verkhovna Rada and of Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who was captured on 18 June 2014 and illegally transferred to Russia. Nominated by the conservative grouping ECR.

Three whistle-blowers: Edward Snowden, a computer expert who worked as a contractor for the US National Security Agency and leaked details of its mass surveillance programmes to the press; Antoine Deltour, a former Price Waterhouse Coopers auditor who revealed secret tax rulings with multinational companies in Luxembourg to journalists; and Stéphanie Gibaud who uncovered tax evasion and money 

Freedoms that cannot come at the cost of others

The European Parliament Information Office in Malta held a Conference on Friday 4 December marking the award of this year’s Sakharov Prize 2015 to Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi. 

The Sakharov Prize is awarded every year to individuals or organisations who, mostly through self-sacrifice, become a beacon of Human Rights in their communities, against all odds.  

Badawi is facing a sentence of 10 years imprisonment and 1000 lashes, 50 of which have been administered in public already, for his writings on the blog ‘Free Saudi Liberals’ where Badawi was critical on radical Islam beliefs and Saudi authority. 

Badawi has been on a hunger strike since Tuesday after being transferred to a new, isolated prison, according to his wife, Ensaf Haidar.

Haidar, who lives in Canada where she and their three children were granted political asylum, confirmed the news by phone after tweeting it.

Haidar is expected to travel to France to accept the Sakharov prize on behalf of her husband during a ceremony at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 16 December. 

Badawi’s plight caught the eye of MEPs in the European Parliament, who voted for Badawi to be this year’s nominee for the Sakharov Prize. The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz called upon Saudi Arabia’s authority to release Badawi so that he would be able to receive the Sakharov Prize at the award ceremony to be held in Plenary in December. 

The Sakharov Conference in Malta was organised to mark Badawi’s plight and the European Parliament’s standing for human rights and to reflect on the relevance of Human Rights in our society. 

At the conference panel former EU Commissioner Tonio Borg shared his experiences as part of the top EU executive where Member States are kept in check on human rights matters also through peer pressure in the implementation charts on EU legislation monitored by the Commission. 

Ruth Farrugia, human rights lecturer pointed out that the European Union could do a better job of walking the talk on Human Rights as she outlined a certain scepticism in the European Court of Justice rulings to applying to the full the European Convention on Human Rights and the rulings by its court. 

Roberta Lepre, presently chairing the Platform of Human Rights Organisations in Malta (PHROM) pointed out that accession to the Union has given us a quantum leap in the implementation of human rights in Malta. She insisted however, that more could be done by empowering human rights organisations to hold their governments to account on human rights. 

Addressing the conference MEP Miriam Dalli stressed that the humanitarian crisis that the EU is experiencing coupled with the present threats to security have brought to the fore the imperative of striking the right balance between security and Human Rights. She insisted however that she will always stand against inroads into our fundamental freedoms as a pretext for enhances security.  

‘‘The duty of the politician is to make sure that one does not come at the cost of the other,’’ she said. 

Dalli pointed out that the Sakharov Prize is a reminder of what the European Parliament and the EU stand for. It is the European Parliament’s duty to safeguard human rights and the fundamental values of the EU, especially today when terrorism is creating fear in Europe and the rest of the world. 

At a second panel Fr Joe Borg, media lecturer, argued that democracy cannot exist without the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression however is a concept that can be vulnerable. That vulnerability does not necessarily come from politicians and their abuse of authority but may be imposed through the monopolisation of ideas through the media and the control of media by commercial interests. 

Carmen Sammut, Head of Department of International Relations at the University of Malta delved into how media and social media have re-shaped the whole spectrum of modern-day communication which is now becoming the ideal vector for radical groups to come out with their radical message to recruit sympathy and militants in our own society. 

The current debates on Human Rights in the European Parliament were then portrayed by MEP Roberta Metsola. She claimed that Europe is about values rather than geography, and thus for MEPs, Badawi is more than just a jailed person in a cell in a far away place in another continent. 

Metsola then gave an account of how Parliament is trying to strike the balance between present calls for enhanced security and the continuing safeguard of Human Rights. She announced the fresh agreement by MEPs on sharing passenger name records between authorities as the example to follow where records will now be shared by with a time-bar guarantee to protect privacy nonetheless. 

The freshly concluded Frontex rules are also another example in that direction with safeguards on immigrant’s rights but decisive action for a strong EU policy on that area. 

The Sakharov Prize 2015 will be awarded to Badawi in the Plenary session on 16 December. 

Notwithstanding calls by MEPs, Badawi is expected to remain inhibited from travelling to collect the prize. His wife Ensaf Haidar, presently hosted in Canada with their three children, is expected to collect the prize in Strasbourg instead of Raif Badawi.  

An online campaign for the liberation of Raif Badawi is presently hitting social media with hashtag #freeraif.

Past winners

1988    Nelson Mandela    Anti-apartheid activist and later President of South Africa

1988    Anatoly Marchenko (posthumously)    Soviet dissident, author and human rights activist

1989    Alexander Dubcek    Slovak politician, attempted to reform the communist regime during thePrague Spring

1990    Aung San Suu Kyi    Burmese politician who this year led the National League for Democracy to electoral victory after being released from 15 years of house             arrest

1991    Adem Demaçi    Kosovo Albanian Politician and long-term political prisoner

1992    Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo    Association of Argentine mothers whose children disappeared during the Dirty War

1993    Oslobođenje    Popular newspaper that defended Bosnia and Herzegovina as a multi-ethnic state

1994    Taslima Nasrin    Bangladeshi doctor, feminist author

1995    Leyla Zana    Politician of Kurdish descent from Southeastern Turkey, who was imprisoned for 10 years for speaking her native language of Kurdish             in the Turkish Parliament

1996    Wei Jingsheng    An activist in the Chinese democracy movement

1997    Salima Ghezali    Journalist and writer, an activist of women’s rights, human rights and democracy in Algeria

1998    Ibrahim Rugova    Albanian politician, the first President of Kosovo

1999    Xanana Gusmão    Former militant who was the first President of East Timor

2000    ¡Basta Ya!    Spanish organisation uniting individuals of various political positions against terrorism

2001    Nurit Peled-Elhanan    Israeli peace activist

2001    Izzat Ghazzawi    Palestinian writer, professor

2001    Dom Zacarias Kamwenho    Angolan archbishop and peace activist

2002    Oswaldo Payá    Cuban political activist and dissident

2003    Kofi Annan (& United Nations)    Nobel Peace Prize recipient and seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations

2004    Belarusian Association of Journalists    Non-governmental organisation “aiming to ensure freedom of speech and rights of receiving and distributing information and                 promoting professional standards of journalism”

2005    Ladies in White    Cuban opposition movement, relatives of jailed dissidents

2005    Reporters Without Borders    France-based non-governmental organisation advocating freedom of the press

2005    Hauwa Ibrahim    Cuban human rights lawyer

2006    Alaksandar Milinkievič    Politician chosen by United Democratic Forces of Belarus as the joint candidate of the opposition in the presidential elections of 2006

2007    Salih Mahmoud Osman    Sudanese human rights lawyer

2008    Hu Jia    Chinese activist and dissident

2009    Memorial    Russian civil rights and historical society

2010    Guillermo Fariñas    Cuban doctor, journalist and political dissident

2011    Asmaa Mahfouz, Ahmed al-Senussi, Razan Zaitouneh, Ali Farzat, Mohamed Bouazizi (posthumously) • Five representatives of the Arab people, in recognition and support of their drive             for freedom and human rights.

2012    Jafar Panahi,Nasrin Sotoudeh    Iranian activists, Sotoudeh is a lawyer and Panahi is a film director.

2013    Malala Yousafzai    Pakistani campaigner for women’s rights and education

2014    Denis Mukwege    Congolese gynecologist treating victims of gang rape

2015    Raif Badawi    Saudi Arabian writer and activist and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals