Per Anger Prize to Struggle for Human Rights in Russia
The prize instituted by the Swedish Government in the memory of Per Anger is being awarded this year to the civil rights activist Arsen Sakalov from Ingushetia in Russia for his selfless humanistic efforts to identify, document, and report abuse taking place in the ongoing conflict in Chechnya.
Arsen Sakalov works in Ingushetia as a coordinator for the Dutch- and Moscow based organization Stichting Russian Justice Initiative. The organization works to assist people who have suffered rights violations by promoting their case in national courts as well as within the European Court for Human Rights in Strasburg. Sakalov heads the organization’s field office and works to identify, document, and report abuses which take place. The documentation becomes the basis for the court cases which are carried out.
For over five years, Sakalov has supplied the rest of the world with information on the gross violations of human rights which are taking place in Chechnya and Ingushetia. His work has given rise to more than ten reports which have been published by well-known and respected human rights groups such as, for example, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
Sakalov’s work is characterized by its conscientiousness, indefatigability, and self-sacrifice. This work is psychologically demanding and carried out anonymously under difficult conditions, right alongside the people he has determined to assist. More than 700 victims and their relatives have had their cases tried in nearly one hundred court cases, in both Russian courts and the European Court for Human Rights.
– In awarding the Per Anger Prize the Living History Forum hope to deliver Arsen Sakalov and his work international recognition, and firstly, call attention to the ongoing work to give offended and abused people back their human rights, says project leader Marie Braunerhielm.
This year’s jury included Elena Anger and Peter Anger, Heléne Lööw, Director of the Living History Forum, Göran Rosenberg, writer and journalist, Jan Eliasson, Sweden’s ambassador to Washington, and Peter Weiderud, Director of International Affairs at the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
Nine volunteer organizations with internationally established contacts within the human rights sector have worked together in the nomination process: United Nations Association of Sweden, Save the Children, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty, the Church of Sweden, Diakonia, the Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, and Reporters Without Borders.
