Posts Tagged ‘Sweden’

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Tunisian and Saudi Human Rights Defenders recipients of the Olof Palme Prize 2012

February 2, 2013

Radhia Nasraoui, human rights defender and lawyer, is awarded the 2012 Olof Palme Prize, for her untiring work against torture and impunity for more than three decades. As a concerned and patriotic citizen, she has under severe pressure defended human rights in Tunisia and challenged authorities under the motto “We must use our voices. Not saying anything makes us accomplices of the oppression”.

Waleed Sami Abu al-Khair receives the 2012 Olof Palme Prize for his strong, self-sacrificing and sustained struggle to promote respect for human and civil rights for both men and women in Saudi Arabia. Together with like-minded citizens and colleagues, Waleed Sam Abu AlKhair does so with the noble goal of contributing to a just and modern society in his country and region.

THE OLOF PALME PRIZE, the Swedish labor movement’s most prestigious award since  1987 when the Olof Palme Fund’s Board decided to establish an annual prize for a particularly significant achievement in the spirit of Olof Palme. The prize consists of USD 75 000.

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Example of transparency in communication between Government and NGO in Sweden

January 26, 2013

In December 2012, the Stockholm-based NGO Civil Rights Defenders wrote a letter to the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, and urged him to demand stronger protection for human rights defenders in Kosovo. Civil Rights Defender’s letter to Carl Bildt was sent after the attacks against the organisations ‘Kosovo 2.0’ and ‘Libertas’ in late 2012. Read more about the background: http://www.civilrightsdefenders.org/news/statements/kosovo-police-must-promptly-investigate-hate-crime-attacks/

English: Carl Bildt, foreign minister in Swede...

Carl Bildt (Wikipedia)

What is interesting is the frank exchange between the NGO and the Ministry and the fact that the exchange of letter can be made public. I think that in quite a few countries civil society can only dream of this kind of transparency.

For this reason I reproduce the response of 21 January 2013 by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in full:

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter about the human rights situation in Kosovo and the information about the attacks in Pristina against human rights defenders, addressed to Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. I’ve been asked to answer you. I would first like to apologize for the late reply.

The events you describe is obviously regrettable and unacceptable, and unfortunately part of a pattern in the Western Balkans where gay, bisexual and transgender people’s rights are not guaranteed and they are subjected to harassments. From a Swedish perspective, strengthening human rights in Kosovo is a priority both on a political level and within the framework of the Swedish development cooperation, where we work closely with the civil society, including Civil Rights Defenders. Improvement of the human rights situation is also crucial for Kosovo’s EU integration.

We are discussing these important issues on a political level with politicians in Kosovo. When Prime Minister Hachim Thaci visited Sweden in October, EU integration and the necessary reforms in Kosovo, including human rights, were major themes. In development cooperation, Sweden is working with great commitment with LGBT issues in several projects in the Western Balkans, including Kosovo. As you probably know the Swedish Institute in 2012 showed the exhibition “Article One” to empower the LGBT movement in Kosovo and make them more visible in the community.

One reason why Sweden wants to see Kosovo as well as the other Western Balkan countries as members of the EU, is the great development of these countries’ societies that comes with the EU integration. Democracy in Kosovo has made considerable progress in recent years, but significant challenges remain, not least in the field of human rights. A clear EU perspective with strict requirements and evaluations with regard to respect for human rights is the best way to drive development in Kosovo. Civil society engagement, both within countries and internationally, is of utmost importance for Kosovo to become a more open and democratic society.

Sincerely

Emilie af Jochnick
MINISTRY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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Photo exhibit on HRDs hits Stockholm – Speak Truth to Power

November 1, 2012

A exhibition at a Stockholm museum features portraits of human rights activists from around the world. The “Speak Truth To Power” exhibition, which recently opened at the Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, features portraits by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer Eddie Adams.  “When you see the photo exhibition you suddenly understand that human rights are not abstract,” Gabor Gombos of the UN Disability Rights Committee tells The Local. “It is very concrete in terms of activities and in terms of human rights defenders,” he adds. Gombos is one of several activists featured in the exhibit, which will remain at the museum until late November.

CTRL/CLICK HERE FOR A COLLECTION OF PHOTOS FROM THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition, which also features portraits of more well-known activists such as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, advocates for “courage without borders” in an effort to raise awareness about the power of human rights.
“‘Speak Truth To Power’ combines the power of arts and education to bring attention to continuing human rights abuses and to demonstrate the capacity of an individual to create change.” The exhibition is based on a book by Kerry Kennedy, daughter of late US attorney general Robert Kennedy, called “Speak Truth to Power” which contains a set of interviews with human rights activists from around the globe.

Sanne Schim van der Loeff

Human rights photo exhibit hits Stockholm – The Local.

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Sapiyat Magomedova, HRD from Dagestan, receives Swedish award

October 30, 2012

The Moscow Times reports today that the Swedish government has awarded a Russian human rights lawyer from Dagestan with the Per Anger Prize for defending victims of human rights violations. Memorial, a Moscow-based human rights center, said in comments carried by Interfax that Magomedova had defended victims of torture, kidnappings, extrajudicial killings and sex-based violence in Dagestan.

Sapiyat Magomedova was nominated by Swedish NGO Civil Rights Defenders for possessing “the best qualities that define a true human rights defender,” according to a statementposted on the NGO’s website.

The 33 year-old lawyer is known for taking up difficult cases that others have rejected for security reasons. Magomedova was herself a victim of violence in 2010, when she was brutally beaten at a local police station in the city of Khasavyurt.

Established in 2004, the Per Anger Prize supports human rights and democracy initiatives and is named after Swedish diplomat Per Anger, who helped rescue Hungarian Jews during World War II.

Sweden Honors Russian Rights Lawyer | News | The Moscow Times.

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Belarus does it again: another two Swedish journalists denied visa

September 24, 2012

“Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” campaign coordinator Valiantsin Stefanovich reports that two more Swedish journalists, one of which is Erik Gonplatten, were denied access.

via Another two Swedish journalists were not allowed to Belarus – Charter97 :: News from Belarus – Belarusian News – Republic of Belarus – Minsk.

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Exiled Ethiopian Human Rights Defender found guilty of supporting terrorism

June 28, 2012

Mesfin Negash, Ethiopian journalist, Photo: Ninke Liebert Photography

Photo: Ninke Liebert Photography

Stockholm-based Civil Rights Defenders reported yesterday that the Ethiopian human rights defender and journalist Mesfin Negash was found guilty of supporting terrorism and treason by an Ethiopian court on Wednesday.

Mesfin was convicted in absentia together with 23 other journalists and political activists. The sentence will be delivered on July the 13th.

” The verdict is just another evidence of how politicized the Ethiopian justice system is, and a sign of the ever growing repression in the country. This is the same law that was used against the Swedish journalists, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson”, says Erik Esbjörnson of Civil Rights Defenders.

Ethiopian authorities charged Mesfin Negash in November 2011 with supporting terrorism, among other. Mesfin was then already in exile, together with several of his colleagues from the newspaper Addis Neger, after having been subjected to severe harassment for a long period.

Mesfin Negash was granted asylum in Sweden in February 2012. In May he was elected Human Rights Defender of the Month in Civil Rights Defenders’ campaign to protect human rights defenders at risk around the world.

– The verdict will not prevent me from working to promote human rights in Ethiopia, says Mesfin Negash.

 

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Refugee in Sweden shot by unknown assailant – Uzbek regime involvement suspected

February 29, 2012

Based on information received today from Mutabar Tadjibayeva, the MEA Laureate of 2008, I share with you the following:
On 22-February, at 13h40 p.m, a well-known religious figure, a former imam from Uzbekistan Obidhon Nazarov was shot in the town of Stromsund, Sweden, where he was settled as a refugee. An unknown person shot him in the head at the entrance of his house when he was going out. The assailant escaped. At the moment, the Swedish police are investigating the crime. The condition of imam Nazaarov remains very critical.
The international human rights organization “Club Des Coeurs Ardents” (“Club Flaming Hearts”) founded by Mutabar and the Centre for political studies “LIGLIS-CENTER” understandably express their suspicion that the Uzbek regime of Karimov has orchestrated the attack.
The message adds the following background: in the period 1990-1996 Obidhon Nazarov was an imam for the capital city mosque “Tuhtaboy”. In 1996 he was unlawfully dismissed from this post and his house near the mosque was taken by the authorities. In 1998, he was forced to flee to Kazakhstan where he was placed under the protection of UNHCR. On 24-May 2004 the eldest son of the imam, Husniddin Nazarov, was kidnapped. Shortly before, Husniddin Nazarov had been questioned by the militia of the city Tashkent. Until today nothing has been heard about or from him.
In the spring of 2006 imam Nazarov was resettled from Kazakhstan to Sweden by UNHCR. But even in Sweden he felt repeatedly forced to change his residence. During 2011, authorities of Uzbekistan requested his extradition but Sweden did not comply and informed the imam himself and uzbek civil society in Sweden about the request.
The authorities of Uzbekistan kept up a constant campaign to discredit the name of O. Nazarov. E.g. in the first half of 2010 a series of video films was shown called “Hunrezlik” (“Bloodshed”), in which the imam is accused of all kind of unlikely crimes. Many of his followers were arrested by the Uzbekistan authorities on trumped-up charges and given long periods of detention.
The imam is considered a protector of the religious freedom in Uzbekistan by his supporters. In 2009 he openly greeted the initiative of US President Obama for the improvement of the USA’s relations with the Muslim world and in 2011, in his sermons, he supported the revolutions in the Arab world as “natural and correct”. However, he condemned the violence, both by the state and by religiously motivated terrorists.
The two organisations end their message with a call for rigorous investigation by the Swedish police and – in view of the catastrophic human rights situation in Uzbekistan – a clear position by the international community.

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