How sensitive human rights awards can be is shown again in the case of Taiwan’s Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award. The award (see: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/asia-democracy-and-human-rights-award) is technically independent but closely related to the Government, which probably explains why the part concerning the “1MDB” corruption scandal in Malaysia was deleted from Maria Chin Abdullah’s acceptance speech.
[Parts of Bersih 2.0 chairman Maria Chin Abdullah’s acceptance speech when accepting the Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award in Taiwan last week were censored by organisers. A copy of the speech made available by the electoral reforms coalition today showed the censored portion was on state investment fund 1MDB and the allegations of corruption plaguing Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration. The section of the speech, titled “Unfettered corruption”, was removed “due to diplomatic sensitivity”, the coalition said.]
Maria in her speech also touched on the lack of freedom of expression, attacks against human rights defenders, and the government’s use of laws such as the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2015 (Sosma). She charged that hate politics was part of a strategy to vilify rights activists. “The politics of hate, religious intolerance and exclusion, which adversely affect the freedom and human rights, are used against human rights defenders. Yet, impunity against wrong doers is not addressed,” she said, adding that change was still a long road ahead. “Malaysians’ voices are loud and clear – racial hostility, generated hatred, intolerance, violence and poverty have no place in our nation…Our clarion call: They can jail us. They can beat us up. But, they can never break our spirit”.
Front Line Defenders is currently accepting nominations for the 2018 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. For more information on this and other awards: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/front-line-defenders-award-for-human-rights-defenders-at-risk If you would like to nominate a human rights defender for the 2018 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, please follow this link: <https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/secure/nomination.php?l=en> Please also note that nominations can be submitted in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic via the Front Line Defenders website.Deadline: midnight Friday, 19 January 2018.
On 7 December 2017Cherie Hu reported in Billboard that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights will award the inaugural High Note Music Prize next year to a major recording artist in recognition of outstanding contributions to humanity and the promotion of human rights through music. The High Note Music Prize selection committee, which is in the process of being assembled, will work with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to select an international artist who has promoted human rights for at least a decade, a spokeswoman tells Billboard.
The annual award will be presented in fall 2018 during the High Note Honors Concert in London. Proceeds from the concert and its worldwide broadcast will benefit the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Grammy Museum and the prize winner’s social justice charity of choice. The award will soon be added to THF’s Digest of Human Rights Awards: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest.
Courtesy of High Note Project
The High Note Music Prize is part of the High Note Project, a new global social justice initiative launched by philanthropic producer David Clark. Clark previously collaborated with Nelson Mandela on the 46664 series of charity concerts in support of HIV/AIDS, featuring performances by the likes of Bono, Beyoncé, Queenand The Eurythmics. Clark is an executive producer of the project as is Chantel Sausedo, whose other credits include producing the Grammy Awards for TV, the Laureus World Sports Awards and In Performance At The White House specials.
Stuart Galbraith, CEO and founder of Kilimanjaro Live — the U.K. promoter behind heavy metal festival Sonisphere and the U.K. and European legs of the Vans Warped Tour — will be co-producing the Honors Concert in London. “We’re both pleased and proud to have been selected as the promoter of the High Note Honors Concert, which will be a significant global event for music and the artists of our time that are passionate about making a difference in the lives of others,” Galbraith said in a statement.
During the concert broadcast, the prize winner’s selected charity will also benefit from a Cause Flash social media campaign that aims to reach over 1 billion people worldwide. Conceived by Clark, Cause Flash was the digital platform behind Water Now, a social media campaign in support of UN World Water Day in 2015 that reached over 800 million people in seven days, marking the largest such campaign in history.
The High Note Project is supported by the UN Human Rights Office, which is launching a yearlong campaign on UN Human Rights Day to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. As this anniversary approaches, “the need for people to stand up to protect human rights is more vital than ever,” Laurent Sauveur, director of external affairs for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement. “Music is also a force to be reckoned with, and musicians have the power to mobilize. We are proud to help launch The High Note Project and High Note Music Prize in an effort to galvanize global awareness of the importance of human rights, and at the same time honor artists who passionately use their work to promote and protect the rights of others.”
GRAMMY-nominated singer and social justice advocate Andra Day, whose song “Rise Up” became an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement, has also voiced her support for the Project: “I admire the mission of High Note and its decision to recognize musicians for their contributions through song”.
All prize winners will receive a diploma and a medal designed by artist Anna Martha Napp that was chosen by a Franco-German jury. The medal symbolises their active commitment to the defence of human rights.
The Asian Correspondent informs us on a year of bloody campaigns, infringements on human rights and accusations of authoritarianism, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen seem like unlikely candidates to be included in a shortlist of nominees for a peace prize. But the 2017 Confucius Peace Prize, labelled the Chinese alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize, has selected the two Southeast Asian leaders for this year’s award.”
Awarded by a private company, the Confucius awards have courted controversy since their foundation in 2010. Originally set up under the Association of Chinese Indigenous Arts in China, then-chairman Tan Changliu claimed the award existed to “promote world peace from an Eastern perspective.” But the award has since been banned by China’s Culture Ministry, forcing the organisers to relocate to Hong Kong. The renamed China International Peace Research Center has presented the award to a string of authoritarian political figures who favour a pro-Beijing stance. In 2015, the recipient was former Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who was accused of a “litany of human rights abuses” over his 37-year term. The organiser cited his “contribution to peace in Africa,” but the award drew widespread international criticism. Mugabe declined to accept the award, which comes with US$15,000 prize money. [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/10/23/mugabe-wins-chinese-peace-prize-this-time-for-real/]
Other winners include Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, former Cuba’s president Fidel Castro, and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The Right Livelihood Foundation stated on Friday 24 November that its 2017 prize winner from Azerbaijan, Khadija Ismayilova, would not be able to attend the 1 December award ceremony in Stockholm because of a travel ban linked to a suspended sentence she is serving. Khadija Ismayilova says that she is under the travel ban “because I criticize the government when it steals the people’s money.” Lawyers Colin Gonsalves from India and Yetnebersh Nigussie of Ethiopia share the cash award of 3 million kronor ($374,000) with Ismayilova. [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/10/04/2017-right-livelihood-laureates-announcement-in-video/]
Ismayilova, Azerbaijan’s top investigative journalist, was convicted of tax evasion in 2015 in what was largely viewed as a payback for her work. She was released from prison six months later after a higher court commuted her 7 ½-year sentence and converted it into a suspended one. She is not legally allowed to travel outside the country while she is still serving the sentence. Ismayilova petitioned the court several times after her release to be allowed to travel outside the country but all of her requests have been denied.
Brazil’s “Piripkura” has won the Amsterdam Human Rights Award at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Recognition for a devastating chronicle, the award comes with a cash prize of €25,000. The jury said of the film: “With this poignant, exceptional story, the filmmakers tackle a broad series of issues that should be high up on the international human rights agenda. The filmic quality of this documentary left us no choice but to award the Amsterdam Human Rights Award to ‘Piripkura.’”The film was produced by Brazil’s Zeza Filmes with Maria Farinha Filmes and Grifa Filmes as associate producers.
“Piripkura,” is a a modern-day ethnographic documentary with distinct differences from its scholarly predecessors. Ethnographic filmmaking started with voyeuristic or educational intentions, as an attempt to show the world something it had never seen. Perhaps it says something about the modern world that these films are now made in the spirit of conservation.
[The film follows Jair Candor, an official with Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency FUNAI, as he ventures into one of the Amazon’s protected indigenous lands, Piripkura. Only three Piripkura tribe-members are still alive today, and only two in their native land. The third, Rita, was forced to flee the lands when logging companies sent in mercenaries to kill the tribespeople, and thus lift government protections of the area. Rita accompanies Candor on his initial visits to confirm the continued existence of Pakyî and Tamandua, the last remaining Piripkura, an undertaking which must be done to sustain the areas protected status. Beyond the inherent dangers of living in the Amazon; corporate farms, fires, logging companies and massive budget cuts to aid agencies are constant threats to the two men.]
(The information below is based on an article published byChinaChange.org)
The city of Weimar announced on June 30 2017 that they were awarding this year’s Weimar Human Rights Prize to Ilham Tohti in recognition of his work upholding the rights of the Uighur people and promoting understanding between Uighurs and Han Chinese. In accordance with tradition, the Prize is awarded every year on December 10—International Human Rights Day. In September 2014, Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life in prison for “separatist activities,” and his real “crimes” though were his efforts to build bridges between different ethnic minorities and his speaking out bluntly about China’s draconian, unproductive policies in Xinjiang. The Weimar City Council hopes that by awarding the Human Rights Prize to Ilham Tohti, “his advocacy for peace and dialogue will not be forgotten, and support for his release will be strengthened.”
Mr. Oehme is in charge of the Weimar Human Rights Prize. He told Radio Free Asia that, starting in early July and shortly after the prize was announced, the city’s official website was attacked and continues to be until now. All news about the award and the December 10 prize ceremony has been removed. Mr. Oehme said that the Weimar government deeply regrets that hackers have deleted the content from the webpage that has been three years in the making. Mr. Oehme also revealed that the City Council’s Human Rights Prize Committee received a telephone call in July from a self-identified “Ms. Li” from the Chinese Embassy in Berlin, alleging that Ilham Tohti’s work had nothing to do with human rights and freedom of speech. She protested Weimar giving the human rights prize to a “Chinese criminal.” The Weimar municipal government also learned that, after the announcement of the prize, Beijing had protested to Berlin through diplomatic channels.
The Weimar government asked the police to conduct a criminal investigation into the hacking. It’s not yet clear where the cyber attacks originated. But Isa Dolkun, current General Secretary of the World Uyghur Congress based in Munich, believes that this attack is undoubtedly being carried out by China.
Mr. Oehme said that no matter what happens, there will be no change in awarding this year’s human rights prize to Ilham Tohti.…
In 2016 Ilham Tohti was nominated for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and he won the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, known as the “Nobel Prize for Human Rights.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein gave the award to Ilham Tohti’s daughter. The Chinese government subsequently attacked the High Commissioner for “interfering with China’s internal affairs and judiciary sovereignty.”
A former ISHR trainee, Karla Avelar defends the rights of LGBTI people. She is a finalist of this year’s Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. In an exclusive interview with ISHR, on 6 November, she talked about her award nomination and what it means to be a trans woman and human rights defender in El Salvador. See also the THF film on her work:
The 2017 Human Rights Tulip has been awarded to Mexican human rights defender Graciela Pérez Rodriguez. Foreign minister Halbe Zijlstra will present her with the prize on Friday 8 December in The Hague, two days ahead of Human Rights Day. The Human Rights Tulip is an annual prize awarded by the Dutch government to human rights defenders who take an innovative approach to promoting human rights. The prize consists of a bronze sculpture and €100,000, which is intended to enable recipients to further develop their work. See: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/tulip-award
Graciela Pérez Rodriguez defends the rights of family members of disappeared persons in Mexico. Through her work she attempts to break through the taboos surrounding this issue. The human rights defender is herself searching for her disappeared daughter, brother and three nephews. Graciela Pérez Rodriguez, a non-professional who has immersed herself in forensic science, is a founding member of the Forensic Citizen Science project. This national collective of disappeared persons’ family members in various Mexican states helped establish the Mexican National Citizen Registry of Disappeared Persons and a DNA database run by and for citizens, which facilitates the identification of victims’ remains at a late stage.
‘Despite the difficult circumstances in which she works, Graciela remains committed to searching for disappeared persons in Mexico,’ Mr Zijlstra said. ‘Human rights defenders like Graciela are indispensable in the fight for a better world. It takes pressure from the inside to achieve real change.’ Disappearances are a serious problem in Mexico. Between January and August this year over 2,400 people were reported missing. In mid-October the Mexican Congress passed a new law to combat disappearances, which provides for longer prison sentences and a committee tasked with finding disappeared persons. The Dutch government sees this law as an important step forward in dealing with this problem.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 