“Justice doesn't come like rain.”According to Alais Morindat, a community leader in Tanzania, justice is hard-won by human rights defenders like Maanda Ngoitiko, a Maasai land and women's rights defender in Tanzania. Maanda is one of six finalists for the 2016 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
Jury members selected human rights defenders from Azerbaijan, Burma/Myanmar, Colombia, Honduras, Palestine, and Tanzania after receiving 126 nominations from 53 countries. The Award is presented annually to a human rights defender who – at great personal risk – has made an exceptional contribution to protecting and promoting the rights of their communities.
“Each of the six finalists for our annual award struggles for justice and human rights in their communities, and each does so in the face of severe risks” said Mary Lawlor, Executive Director of Front Line Defenders, as she announced the finalists in Dublin on 10 May.
As governments, multinational corporations, paramilitaries, and criminal groups try to limit the powerful work of peaceful human rights defenders, the 2016 finalists and their families have faced harassment, physical attacks, defamation campaigns, prison sentences, and intimidation.
Front Line Defenders works to promote the visibility and protection of the six finalists named today, each of whom is critical to the human rights movement in their countries and communities.
“Human rights defenders tell us that international support is critical to their work. This Award demonstrates – to them and to their oppressors – that Ireland stands behind these incredible individuals. It proves that defenders at-risk do not work in a vacuum, but as part of a global fight for human rights,” said Ms. Lawlor on Tuesday.
Ms. Phyoe Phyoe Aung is student rights defender in Burma/Myanmar. She is the General Secretary of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), and has led widespread protests for academic freedom across the country. She spent three years in prison for peacefully participating in the “Saffron Revolution” in 2008, and was again arrested in 2015 with more than 100 other students – many of whom were tortured. Phyoe Phyoe was released on presidential pardon just three weeks ago, in April 2016.
Mr. Mohammed Khatib is a human rights defender working on the right to self-determination in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He is Palestinian lawyer and one of the founders of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), which connects peaceful protests in different villages across Palestine. In his 11 years as a human rights defender, he has been targeted with harassment, detentions and abuse by the Israeli military, and physical assault by Israeli settlers. He has been one of the leaders of protests in his village of Bil'in, in the West Bank, which have been held every week since 2005, and which helped pressure the Israeli Supreme Court to order the re-routing of the Wall it has constructed around the village.
Ms. Ingrid Vergara Chavez is a land rights defender working with the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE) in Sucre, Colombia. Ingrid and her colleagues demand justice and an end to impunity for government and paramilitary crimes, and advocate for the return of lands to displaced peasant and indigenous communities In response, she receives constant death threats. Four of her colleagues have been killed in the past two years, and she and her daughters have been threatened with weapons, public pamphlets, phone and email messages, and surveillance.
Mr. Khalid Bag irov is a representative finalist, the face of a group of threatened and persecuted human rights lawyers in Azerbaijan. When the Azeri government began an unprecedented crackdown on civil society in 2013, lawyers taking on the cases of prominent human rights defenders and journalists became targets of government persecution themselves. For his bold work defending some of the most prominent and targeted HRDs in the country, Bagirov was disbarred in 2015 – but has since continued to litigate and win cases before the European Court of Human Rights. He continues to advise the few remaining rights lawyers in the country, who are collectively honoured with this nomination.
Ms. Ana Mirian Romero is a land rights and indigenous rights defender in Honduras. She is a member of Movimiento Indígena Lenca de La Paz Honduras – MILPAH (Lenca Indigenous Movement of La Paz, Honduras) and the Consejo Indígena San Isidro Labrador (San Isidro Labrador Indigenous Council). She has been active in opposing the installation of the Los Encinos hydro-electric dam on indigenous land near the Chinacla river. In 2010 she filed a lawsuit for the recognition of the community's ancestral lands, and now she her family are targets of repeated attacks by police, military and armed civilians connected to the hydroelectric company. Her children were forced to leave school due to repeated harassment, and in early 2016 her home was burned to the ground, after she returned home from giving birth to her youngest daughter.
Ms. Maanda Ngoitiko is a women's rights, pastoralist rights, and land rights defender in Tanzania. She is one of the most targeted HRDs in the region, openly opposing “tourism” projects and land concessions that rob Maasai communities of their land and particularly harm women and girls’ education and economic opportunities. In 2013 the security services told Ngoitiko that if she didn’t stop, they would “take her away and never be seen again”. The next day she returned to her work. She continues to mobilise women to advocate for land and food security despite ongoing physical threats and judicial harassment. As recently as April 2016, local authorities called her in forinterrogation.
Cross Party Jury Members Pat Breen TD, Minister Katherine Zappone TD, Brendan Smith TD, Senator Ivana Bacik, Sami Al-Haj (Al Jazeera Media Network) and Noeline Blackwell (Front Line Defenders) selected the finalists in recognition of their ongoing fight for human rights.
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