AFP reported on 30 January that the international civil rights movement Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation on Friday won Sweden’s Olof Palme human rights prize for 2020.
The foundation was honored for its work promoting “peaceful civil disobedience against police brutality and racial violence all over the world,” prize organizers said in a statement.
The Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2013 in the United States, has “in a unique way exposed the hardship, pain, and wrath of the African-American minority at not being valued equal to people of a different color,” the statement said.
The movement had its major international breakthrough in the summer of 2020 following several cases of extreme brutality in the US, including the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Prize organizers noted that an estimated 20 million people have taken part in Black Lives Matter protests in the US alone, and millions more around the world.
“This illustrates that racism and racist violence is not just a problem in American society, but a global problem.”
For more on the Olof Palme Prize see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/60DE9060-BC07-450D-B6B8-5A64C0F6D612
https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/01/30/21/black-lives-matter-wins-swedish-rights-prize
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
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