Venezuelan opposition wins EU human rights prize

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS (AA) - The 2017 Sakharov human rights prize will be awarded to Venezuela’s opposition, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani announced on Thursday.

Tajani told lawmakers it is their duty to denounce the situation in the turbulent South American country, where "many people are being denied their fundamental freedoms".

In April, the European Parliament accused the government in Caracas of using "brutal repression" against those protesting against the creation of a new constituent assembly in the country.

"For the last several years, Venezuela has been in a political crisis. The ruling party has steadily limited the rule of law and in March 2017 the country's supreme court stripped the democratically-elected national assembly of legislative power," read a European Parliament statement.

"Since the beginning of the year, more than 130 people have been killed in street protests, most of them in anti-government demonstrations and more than 500 people have been arbitrarily imprisoned," it added.

The other two finalists for this year's Sakharov Prize were Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, a human rights defender from Guatemala and Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean playwright, journalist and writer, who was arrested in 2001 by the Eritrean authorities during a political crackdown. He has been imprisoned without a trial since and was last seen in 2005. Isaak was also a Sakharov finalist in 2009.

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, is awarded each year by the European Parliament.

The prize will be awarded during the parliament’s December plenary session.

Last year, the prize was awarded to Nadia Murad Basee Taha and Lamiya Aji Bashar, two Ezidi women who survived sexual enslavement by Daesh in Iraq.