Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who represents opposition activists and is now in prison, and banned filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the annual EU Sakharov Prize for dedication to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought. The other nominees were the jailed Russian punk band Pussy Riot and a Belarussian civil rights activist. Recall that the prize was established in December 1988 and named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. Winners get a 50,000 euro ($65,000) prize.
As BBC reports, This year’s joint winner lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh defended opposition activists following the disputed June 2009 presidential elections, as well as women and young people. She is now serving a six-year jail term at the notorious Evin prison for “acting against the national security” and “propaganda against the regime”. The 45-year-old is currently is solitarily confinement and recently went on hunger strike to protest against the authorities’ harassment of her husband and two children.
Director Jafar Panahi, 52, is well known for his humanist films on life in Iran, but in 2010 he was put under house arrest and banned from filmmaking for 20 years. His 2011 documentary This is Not a Film was smuggled out of the country on a USB stick hidden in a cake. The President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz has said the decision to award the prize to the two Iranians was a unanimous one.
