{"id":16168,"date":"2018-09-24T12:30:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T12:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16168"},"modified":"2018-09-24T12:30:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T12:30:36","slug":"saudi-human-rights-activists-awarded-alternative-nobel-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16168","title":{"rendered":"Saudi human rights activists awarded ‘alternative Nobel prize’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Three jailed Saudi human rights activists have been named winners of “the alternative Nobel prize” award, along with two anti-corruption activists, a farmer, and an agricultural scientist.<\/p>\n

Abdullah al-Hamid, Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani and Waleed Abu al-Khair were jointly awarded a one million kronor ($113,400) cash award by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation “for their visionary and courageous efforts … to reform the totalitarian political system in Saudi Arabia.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Created in 1980, the\u00a0Right Livelihood Award\u00a0<\/span>honours efforts that prize founder Jacob von Uexkull felt were being ignored by the Nobel prizes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previous winners\u00a0include former NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), a UK-based NGO working towards the abolition of the international arms trade, and\u00a0the White Helmets, a Syrian rescue group that helps victims of the country’s brutal civil war.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The three laureates have challenged this authoritarian system through peaceful methods, calling for universal human rights, and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy,”\u00a0the jury said.<\/span><\/p>\n

“As a consequence of their courageous struggle for a more pluralistic and democratic society, the three men have been sentenced to between 10 and 15 years imprisonment and all are currently in jail.<\/p>\n

“Their visionary and inclusive approach to shaping a positive future for their home country has been, and continues to be, a great source of inspiration for many people in Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf region.”<\/p>\n

Al-Qahtani and al-Hamid were founding activists of the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights, known by its Arabic acronym HASEM.<\/p>\n

According to<\/a> CNN, they were sentenced by Saudi authorities to 10 and 11 years\u00a0for “providing inaccurate information to foreign media, founding and operating an unlicensed human rights organisation, as well as other offenses”.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, activist and lawyer Abu al-Khair was arrested in 2014 for signing a statement with dozens of others calling for reforms in the kingdom.<\/p>\n

He later received a 15-year sentence for “disobeying the ruler” and “harming the reputation of the state by communicating with international organizations,” likely over his work as an outspoken activist.<\/p>\n

The 2018 honorary award was given to Thelma Aldana of Guatemala and Colombia’s Ivan Velasquez “for their innovative work in exposing abuse of power and prosecuting corruption.”<\/p>\n

The other two winners were Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer from Burkina Faso who transformed an almost 40-hectare piece of inhospitable land into forest, and Australian Tony Rinaudo, an agronomist who has taken on the role of combating the Sahel region’s extreme deforestation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three jailed Saudi human rights activists have been named winners of “the alternative Nobel prize” award, along with two anti-corruption activists, a farmer, and an agricultural scientist. Abdullah al-Hamid, Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani and Waleed Abu al-Khair were jointly awarded a one million kronor ($113,400) cash award by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation “for their visionary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}