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Russia's Pussy Riot, Iran's Panahi short-listed for Sakharov

25 September 2012, 16:46 CET
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(BRUSSELS) - Jailed members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi are on a shortlist of five nominees for the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov rights prize, officials said Tuesday.

The winner of the 50,000-euro (70,000-dollar) award will be announced October 26 with the ceremony set for December 12 in Strasbourg, a parliamentary committee announced.

Past winners include anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Film director Panahi was nominated jointly with prominent Iranian rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Panahi is free but facing a six-year sentence and banned from making more movies. Last year his "This Is Not A Film" had to be smuggled out in a USB key inside a cake to be screened at the Cannes film festival.

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced last month to two years in a labour camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" after bursting into an Orthodox cathedral to stage protest songs against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The other three shortlisted for the prize are jailed Belarussian Ales Belyatsky, the Pakistani lawyer working to defend the rights of Christians, Joseph Francis, and a group of jailed Rwandan dissidents Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Deogratias Mushayidi et Bernard Ntaganda.

Last year's prize honoured five Arab Spring activists, including the Tunisian who sparked region-wide uprisings by setting himself on fire -- fruitseller Mohamed Bouazizi.

Syrian pair, lawyer Razan Zeitouneh and cartoonist Ali Farzat, were prevented from attending last year's ceremony while Egypt's Asmaa Mahfouz and Libyan dissident Ahmed al-Zubair Ahmed al-Sanusi were on hand to pick up the award.

Further information, European Parliament

Sakharov Prize


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