Memorial and Svetlana Gannushkina Receive Sjur Lindebrækkes Prize for Democracy and Human Rights

17 views

Skip to first unread message

Human Rights Center Memorial

unread,

May 10, 2012, 10:33:37 AM5/10/12

to hrcmemo...@googlegroups.com

Memorial and Svetlana Gannushkina Receive Sjur Lindebrækkes Prize for Democracy and Human Rights

On May 6, 2012 in Oslo (Norway) the Sjur Lindebrækkes Prize* presentation ceremony took place.

This year Memorial and Svetlana Gannushkina** received the Prize instituted by the Conservative party of Norway.

The official note about the awarding reads that although in the last 12 years the development of Russia has unfortunately been going in the direction of restriction of liberties - under the guise of restoring the Russian authorities has totally overriden courts, mass media, civil society and electoral processes - there is still someone who takes care of the legacy of Sakharov - Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina and the Memorial movement.

At the meeting of the Conservative party during which the Prize was awarded, Inge Lioning, former chancellor of the Oslo University, chair of the human rights committee in the Norway parliament, gave a speech. He spoke about the work of Human Rights Center Memorial and Civic Assistance Committee noting that our work is hard and demands courage

Svetlana Gannushkina thanked him and the party for the high valuation of the human rights activists' wotk. She expressed special appreciation to Norway for the fact that this small country receives so many refugees who need defence, for the well-organised work on their integration, for the fact that Norway becomes a second motherland for those refugees. Gannushkina also spoke about rapid ongoing migration processes in the world. "They raise new challenges which we have to answer with new mechanisms of maintenance and development of democracy principles and human rights conception," - Gannushkina said.

After the ceremony Gannushkina took part in a number of meetings with the activists of the Conservative party, parliament deputies, political scientists. Chair of the Conservative party Erna Solberg who had nominated us for the Prize paid much attention to the discussion of the problem of the defence of human rights in modern world.

Watch the video of the award ceremony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UKItt0tF0.

See photo: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5075/7001769850_697e48ebfb_c.jpg, http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7117/7147858871_ba6da29dca_c.jpg, http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8008/7001771596_cc4139c46a_c.jpg and others in the Hoyre's album on Flickr.com: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoyre/tags/h%C3%B8yreslandsm%C3%B8te2012/page2/.

* The Sjur Lindebrække Prize for Democracy and Human Rights has been awarded since 2007 to individuals or organizations which actively and consistently are promoting basic political rights and economic freedoms and those working to strengthen democratic institutions and processes in societies where democracy and human rights are suppressed or threatened.

**Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina is a member of the board of HRC Memorial, head of the programme Migration and Law, chair of the Civic Assistance committee.