Nobel Peace Prize winners hope award means protection from danger

Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB

Nobel Peace Prize winners Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov spoke of the dangers journalists face doing their job in their home countries at a press conference on Thursday. Both said they hope the international attention and publicity would protect them from future harm.

Ressa: Peace Prize means protection

During a press conference at the Nobel Institute on Thursday, Nobel Peace Prize winners Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov spoke of what they hoped securing the prestigious award would bring them.

Ressa, 58, faces four lawsuits in her home country and was only this week granted permission to leave The Philippines to collect her award. She likened the Peace Prize to a ‘shield’ which has “raised the energy and morale not only of Filipino journalists but of all journalists all over the world…” she told press agency NTB.

Over the last decade, more than 33 journalists have been killed in the Philippines, where freedom of expression is seriously under threat by the authoritarian leanings of President Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa’s media organization, Rappler, has been under financial and judicial pressure from the Filipino government due to it broadcasting the dark, bloody, and illegal aspects of Duterte’s war on the illegal drug trade. Extrajudicial killings, by members of the police force and Aarmy, are seen as having been personally approved by the President.

Muratov giving his Nobel Peace Prize lecture at the Oslo City Hall. Photo: Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB

Muratov: Society must help journalists

Dmitry Muratov, 60, has seen 6 of his colleagues at his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, killed over the past decade. He said he hopes that since “journalism helps society. Now society must help journalists.” His newspaper is often at odds with the regime of President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia since 1999. Though the President did congratulate Muratov on winning the award, he rather ominously and ambiguously said the award did not shield Muratov from any protection.

Muratov noted that since the announcement of his win in October, his newspaper has seen a dramatic increase in workload. Requests for Muratov’s help, from members of the public, for the stopping of illegal logging, legal assistance, and even obtaining vital medicines have flooded in to the newspaper.

Source : ©️ NTB Scanpix / #NorwayTravel

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2 Comments on "Nobel Peace Prize winners hope award means protection from danger"

  1. Meanwhile, it turns out that earlier today England’s “High Court” overruled an impartial judge and has cleared the way for dissident whistleblower journalist – whom the Peace Committee turned its back on – to be sent to the States for trial and imprisonment and probably a Jeffrey Epstein fate.

    My comment on British Independent:

    Posted on British Independent, however long it lasts:

    So the Swedish sex crime frame was dropped, having achieved its purpose of getting Assange out of circulation.

    Then the Icelandic hacker admitted he had been bribed to falsely implicate Assange in illegal hacking.

    An impartial judge said he shouldn’t be sent to the States for fear of his life.

    And now the “High Court” turns him over.

    Q.: What right does the U.S. have to prosecute a foreign/Australian journalist for getting and publishing American secret documents to whistle-blow Nuremberg/Hague caliber war crimes and deceit leading to a war crime war?

    And when we – Dr. David Halpin in the lead – petitioned the High Court for a judicial review of English governments’ refusal to hold a genuine inquest (historically legally required in such a case) into the questionable and highly questioned “suicide” of Iraq war criminal fraud whistleblower Dr. David Kelly, we were turned down cold.

    Clearly, the English “High Court” is merely a legal rubber stamp front of a national security dictatorship.

    And meanwhile in Oslo, the “Nobel Peace Committee” celebrates its awards to “approved” dissident journalists from Russia and the Philippines, coldly turning its back on Assange.

    Don’t persons in our Western establishment ever make *themselves* sick with their injustices and betrayal of our most basic values and most honorable people?

    How can these “Peace Committee” members live with themselves?

    We have no right to pass moral or legal judgment on the East for ANYthing after mocking travesties like this, and the East knows it.

  2. Fascinating.
    And this morning all my Firefox bookmarks and history have disappeared.
    NSA? GCHQ? Israel? Norway?

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