When Fighting for Freedom Gets You a Prize (and Sometimes a Jail Cell)
The European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize reads like a who’s who of people who’ve seriously annoyed authoritarian regimes – and we mean that as the highest compliment.
In 2022, the entire Ukrainian people snagged the award, because apparently when your country is being invaded, collective bravery counts. The year before, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won, though he was too busy being imprisoned to collect it himself. His daughter had to pick it up – awkward family errand if there ever was one.
The prize has a knack for honoring people who can’t actually attend the ceremony. Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti won in 2019 while serving a life sentence in China. Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov got the 2018 prize from a Russian prison cell. Sensing a pattern here?
Sometimes the winners are tragically unavoidable. In 2016, Yazidi activists Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar received recognition for surviving ISIS captivity and speaking out about sexual violence. Saudi blogger Raif Badawi earned the 2015 prize for the crime of checks notes advocating for free speech online, which got him flogged and jailed.
The 2014 winner, Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, actually made it to the ceremony – probably because he was too busy saving lives to get arrested. He’s dedicated his career to helping victims of sexual violence in conflict zones, proving that not all heroes wear capes. Some wear scrubs.
The Belarusian opposition in 2020 and Venezuela’s democratic opposition in 2017 rounded out the list, because apparently standing up to dictators is excellent resume material for this award.
The Sakharov Prize: celebrating people who looked at oppression and said “nah.”