Journalists Andrzej Poczobut and Mzia Amaglobeli, imprisoned in Belarus and Georgia, have won the Sakharov Prize. Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, announced this on Wednesday.
Both journalists were convicted “on false charges, simply because they did their job and spoke out against injustice,” Metsola said during the announcement. “Through their courage they have become symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy.”
The Sakharov Prize, named after Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), is the most important European award for individuals, groups or organizations committed to democracy and human rights. Nelson Mandela was the first recipient of the prize in 1988, followed in the years that followed by dissidents, activists, journalists and politicians from more than thirty countries around the world. Last year the prize went to Venezuelan opposition member María Corina Machado, who also received the Nobel Peace Prize this month.
Figurehead
Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli (50) has been called the first female political prisoner in Georgia since the Soviet years by human rights organizations. The country declared independence in 1991. She was sentenced to two years in prison in August for punching a police chief in the face after he attacked her during anti-government protests in January. The case was seen as a litmus test for press freedom in the country.
After her arrest, Amaglobeli became the figurehead of the pro-democracy protest movement, which opposes the ruling party Georgian Dream, according to the European Parliament. Hundreds of sympathizers waited for Amaglobeli as she was driven to prison. During her closing argument, she stated that she was not questioned by prosecutors during seven months of captivity. “They made everything up and falsified it,” she said.
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Amaglobeli is the co-founder and director of the independent news medium Batumelebi/Netgazeti. In the early 2000s she started an editorial office in the coastal city of Batumi, later followed by an editorial office in the capital Tbilisi. The newspaper grew into an influential research medium that won international journalism prizes.
The Georgian government, which is strongly influenced by Moscow, is making life increasingly difficult for the newspaper. Last summer, the government seized the newspaper’s bank accounts. Above all articles from the news site there is a red box, in which the editors demand her “immediate release”.
Penal colony
Andrzej Poczobut (52) is a correspondent in Belarus for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. In his work he regularly criticized the autocratic leader Aleksandr Lukashenko. In 2021, he was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony for threatening Belarusian national security. His health has deteriorated and his family are not allowed to visit him, according to the European Parliament.
In 2023, Parliament called in a resolution calls for the journalist’s immediate release. In it, Parliament declared that the charges against Poczobut are politically motivated and intended to silence independent voices.
The award announcement was attended by Belarusian opposition leaders Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was released last June after five years of political captivity. They received the Sakharov Prize in 2020. Tikhanovskaya praised Pozcobut to the AP news agency for “uncompromisingly speaking the truth about the peaceful protests in Belarus and the brutal terror of the Lukashenko regime.”
In a way, Pozcobut resembles the Russian dissident and nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov, after whom the prize is named. writes Gazeta Wyborcza Wednesday. “Both dissidents single-handedly defied totalitarian power. Despite repression, they did not bow.” His colleagues hope that the award will lead to his release. “Andrzej’s fate is no longer just a matter between Lukashenko’s secret services and Poland. It is now a matter for the whole of Europe,” the newspaper wrote.
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