The Ukrainian people and their representatives, the Colombian Truth Commission and the WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange are the candidates for the 2022 Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament (EP), the institution announced on Thursday.
According to a statement from the EP, the candidacy of the “courageous people of Ukraine, represented by its president, its elected leaders and civil society”, resulted from the combination of three nominations from the parliamentary groups: the conservatives of the EPP, the socialists of the S&D and the ECR (centre-right).
The candidacy of the Colombian Truth Commission, an institution created within the framework of the 2016 peace agreement with the country, with the aim of clarifying the facts about human rights violations during the conflict and defending the rights of millions of victims of the civil war in the country, was presented by the leftist parliamentary group Izquierda.
Julian Assange, one of the founders of the WikiLeaks association – which released documents on war crimes, arbitrary arrests and human rights violations – is being held in the United Kingdom, at risk of being extradited to the United States and tried for espionage and computer science. crime. .
His candidacy was put forward by 41 MEPs and the three finalists were selected by the EP’s Foreign Affairs and Development committees.
On the 16th, the EP Conference of Presidents will choose the winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2022, and the award will be presented on December 13, at the plenary session in Strasbourg.
Candidacies can be made by political groups or by groups of at least 40 MEPs.
In 2021, the prize was awarded to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for his fight against corruption and abuses of power in the Kremlin, who was represented by his daughter for being detained in Russia.
The award, which honors the physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov, has been awarded annually by the European Parliament since 1988, for an amount of 50,000 euros.
Source: TSF
