The Ukrainian people and their representatives, the Colombian Truth Commission and WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange are the candidates for the European Parliament (EP) Sakharov Prize 2022, the institution announced today.
According to an EP communiqué, the candidacy of the “courageous people of Ukraine, represented by its president, its elected leaders and civil society”, was the result of the combination of three nominations by parliamentary groups: the conservatives of the PPE, the socialists from the S&D and the ECR (center-right).
The candidacy of the Colombian Truth Commission, an institution created under the 2016 peace agreement with the aim of establishing the facts about human rights violations during the conflict and defending the rights of millions of victims of the country’s civil war, was presented by the left-wing faction.
Julian Assange, one of the founders of the WikiLeaks association – which has released documents on war crimes, arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses – is being held in the UK, at risk of extradition to the US and tried for espionage and crime. .
His candidacy was presented by 41 MEPs and the three finalists were selected by the Foreign Affairs and EP Development Committees.
On December 16, the Conference of Presidents of the EP will select the winner of the 2022 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and the prize will be awarded at the plenary session in Strasbourg on December 13.
Nominations 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 abuse of power in the Kremlin, who was represented by his daughter because of his detention in Russia.
The prize, which honors the physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov, has been awarded annually by the European Parliament since 1988 for an amount of 50 thousand euros.
Source: DN
