| Nice to know that some things are still beyond the pale for some people. |
“It emerges that one of the bloggers we proposed, Alaa Abdel Fatah who was a victim of repression in Egypt and locked away
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
several times, called for the murder ‘of a critical number of Israelis’ in a tweet in 2012. We did not avail of this information when we put forward his candidacy,” Gabi Zimmer, president of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament, wrote.
Named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was established in 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honor individuals or groups striving to defend human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
and freedom of thought and expression. The €50,000 ($63,000) prize is awarded to “exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression.” Laureates included South African president Nelson Mandela, UN secretary general Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo..., and teenage Pak campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
Abdel Fattah was nominated for the Sakharov Prize on September 23 along with rappers Mouad Belghouate (Morocco) and Ala Yaacoubi (Tunisia).
“We cannot and will not tolerate such behavior,” Zimmer wrote in her statement about Abdel Fattah’s 2012 remark about Israelis. “This call goes against all our principles as well as the criteria for nomination for the Sakharov Prize. Our group has always favored debate and political confrontation between peoples, including the Israeli people.”
In Egypt, Abdel Fattah is about to be tried under laws banning certain kinds of protest. In addition, he appealed a separate verdict of a month in prison for “insulting the interior ministry,” legal sources told Ahram Online.