Nobel Prize

Controversy Over Activist’s Award Reflects The Challenges Of Bringing Peace To Korea

December 17, 2022 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Resist! Korea, Nobel Prize, Peace, Women's Activism

On December 13, 2022, Women Cross DMZ Executive Director Christine Ahn received the Peace Summit Medal for Social Activism at the 18th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but not without controversy. As we all well know, not everyone — mostly politicians in the U.S. and South Korea — want peace with North Korea. In fact, Jin-tae Kim, the right-wing, conservative, hawkish governor of the province of Pyeongchang, where the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates was held, declined to attend the conference, a conference about peace-making. South Korean news media sources stated that the governor reportedly believed that Christine Ahn was a North Korea apologist because seven years ago, in 2015, she led a 30-woman international delegation, including two Nobel Peace Laureates, to North Korea for meetings with North Korean women, not North Korean government officials.

Mairead Maguire Nominates Julian Assange For Nobel Peace Prize

January 8, 2019 Staff, Worldbeyondwar.org Create! Julian Assange, Nobel Prize, Wikileaks

“Julian Assange and his colleagues in Wikileaks have shown on numerous occasions that they are one of the last outlets of true democracy and their work for our freedom and speech. Their work for true peace by making public our governments’ actions at home and abroad has enlightened us to their atrocities carried out in the name of so-called democracy around the world. This included footage of inhumanity carried out by NATO/Military, the release of email correspondence revealing the plotting of regime change in Eastern Middle countries, and the parts our elected officials paid in deceiving the public. This is a huge step in our work for disarmament and nonviolence worldwide.

Two Dominicans With Grand Rapids Roots Help Win Nobel Peace Prize

February 5, 2018 Estelle Slootmaker, Rapidgrowthmedia.com Resist! Nobel Prize, Nuclear Weapons

The rolling landscaped grounds and impeccably maintained buildings of the Marywood Campus on East Fulton Street lie just outside of East Grand Rapids. Inside the Dominican Center building on a cold winter morning, the aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls floats on the air. Gray-haired Dominican nuns disarmingly smile and nod. Two of them are disarming the world. The world has noticed. Sister Carol Gilbert, OP and Sister Ardeth Platte, OP, Michigan natives visiting Marywood from Washington DC, presented "A Yes for Humanity: One Step Closer to Nuclear Disarmament" on Tuesday, January 30. They spoke about being part of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) delegation to the United Nations last spring and summer that was instrumental in The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Deep Shame On Suu Kyi And Myanmar

September 11, 2017 Eric Margolis, www.commondreams.org Educate! Myanmar, Nobel Prize, Regimes

By Eric Margolis for Common Dreams - Few people have ever heard of Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Not many more could find Myanmar on a map – particularly after its name was changed some years ago from Burma to Myanmar. The exception is Burma’s sainted lady leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who became a worldwide celebrity and Nobel Prize winner. The media loved her, a sort of Burmese Joan of Arc versus its brutal military junta. But now, tragically, the Rohingya are headline news thanks to Myanmar’s brutal ethnic cleansing of one of the world’s most abused, downtrodden people. Almost as revolting is the world’s failure to take any action to rescue the Rohingya from murder, rape, arson and ethnic terrorism. In recent weeks, over 270,000 Rakhines have been driven from their homes in Rakhine State in western Myanmar and now cower in makeshift refugee camps just across the border in Bangladesh in the midst of monsoon season. Rohingya have lived for centuries in Burma/Myanmar. Some of their ancestors may have been brought as coolies or indentured laborers from neighboring East Bengal (today Bangladesh) by the British rulers of the region. Once again, the British Empire was behind yet another world problem. Burma is a hodgepodge of peoples and ethnicities. The largest, about 60%, are Buddhist Burmans, but there are many other important groups like Karen, Kachin, Chin, Mon and Shan.

Kissinger And Brzezinski To Be Honoured By Nobel Institute

December 10, 2016 Jan Oberg, www.blog.transnational.org Educate! Henry Kissinger, Nobel Prize

By Jan Oberg for TFF - These two top officials behind major US wars (Iran/Afghanistan and Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos) and regime change (against Allende, Chile) will speak at the first of a new event, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum Oslo, created by the Nobel Institute in Oslo. More here. The leaders of the two institutions declare that they are proud to have succeeded in getting these two diplomats to Norway – and the media of course will be there. The event is sponsored by the California-based company InCircl – a marketing and mobile payment company. The university rector is dr. med. and participant at Bilderberg world elite power group in 2011 Ole Petter Ottersen and you can write him at rektor@uio.no

Herman Wainggai – Nominated For The 2016 Nobel Peace Price

July 18, 2016 Staff, www.wpan.wordpress.com Educate! Nobel Prize

By Staff of WPAN - Herman Wainggai was born in Jayapura, West Papua. He has devoted more than 20 years of his life to nonviolence struggle to free his people from Indonesian colonial government. In 2002, he was charged with subversion and sent to prison for two years. His crime was organizing peaceful protests against Indonesian occupation. He served his full prison term and released in 2004. In 2006, fearing for his life, Mr. Wainggai and 42 other West Papuans escaped on a homemade boat to Australia. After 4 nights and 3 days and near starvation, they landed in Australia.

Tunisian Labor & Rights Coalition Wins Nobel

October 10, 2015 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Create! Nobel Prize, Tunisia

By Sarah Lazare for Common Dreams, The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded its prestigious Peace Prize to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet—the coalition of labor unions and human rights groups that forged a path to political compromise following the country's 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising. The announcement was immediately met with cries of mabrouk, or congratulations, to the ordinary people and left-wing forces whose tenacious efforts made the initiative possible. Established in 2013, the quartet is a coalition of the Tunisian General Labor Union(UGTT); the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA); theTunisian Human Rights League (LTDH); and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.

Nobel Foundation Sued For Not Giving Peace Prize To Peace Advocates

October 8, 2015 Staff, www.nobelwill.org Resist! Nobel Prize

By Staff of The Nobel Peace Prize Watch - The controversy over peace prizes disconnected from the specific peace vision of Alfred Nobel is now coming to a head in a lawsuit initiated by Mairead Maguire, a Nobel laureate; David Swanson, USA; Jan Oberg, Sweden; and the Nobel Peace Prize Watch. None of the members of the Board of the Nobel Foundation had responded when the time limit set in a notice of litigation expired on Tuesday. The plaintiffs have retained attorney Kenneth Lewis, Stockholm, to have the Stockholm City Court declare the prize to the EU an illegal use of the Foundation´s funds. In December 2012 the members of the Board of the Nobel Foundation did not heed protests from four Nobel laureates, Mairead Maguire, Perez Esquivel, Desmond Tutu, and the International Peace Bureau, who in a letter had warned that “The EU is clearly not ‘the champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will.”

Committee Insider On Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

September 20, 2015 Alister Doyle and Stine Jacobsen, www.reuters.com Educate! Barack Obama, Nobel Prize, Peace, Wars and Militarism

By Alister Doyle and Stine Jacobsen for Reuters. Oslo, Norway - The effect of giving the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama fell short of the nominating committee's hopes, and several awards in the past 25 years were even more questionable, the committee's former secretary says in a new book. Geir Lundestad, lifting a veil on the secretive five-member panel, also reveals that former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, late Czech president Vaclav Havel and several rock stars were among those who were considered for the award but never won. Lundestad writes in "Secretary of Peace" that the prize to Obama was the most controversial during his time as director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute from 1990-2015. He attended committee meetings but had no vote.

Nobel Peace Laureates Oppose Torture, Perpetuate Myths

August 16, 2015 Robert J. Burrowes, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Nobel Prize, Peace, Torture, US Empire

By Robert J. Burrowes of Flame Tree Prtoject. In a recent letter to US President Barack Obama twelve Nobel Peace laureates declared their support for the long history of US elite violence against Native Americans and enslaved Africans, as well as the US imperial violence around the world that has butchered tens of millions of people over the past 200 years. See 'US: An End to Torture: Twelve Nobel Peace Prize laureates write to President Barack Obama asking the US to close the dark chapter on torture once and for all. Obama responds'. The letter, the response from Obama and a subsequent article written by Ramos-Horta – see 'Obama: The Courage to Say "We Were Wrong"' – were a stark reminder to those of us who struggle to end the violence in our world of what genuine peace activists are up against.

12 Nobel Prize Winners Urge Obama To Release Torture Report

October 28, 2014 The Community, www.thecommunity.com Organize! Nobel Prize, Obama, Peace, Torture

Dear Mr. President, The open admission by the President of the United States that the country engaged in torture is a first step in the US coming to terms with a grim chapter in its history. The subsequent release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence summary report will be an opportunity for the country and the world to see, in at least some detail, the extent to which their government and its representatives authorized, ordered and inflicted torture on their fellow human beings. We are encouraged by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s recognition that “the creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes,” as well as the Senate Committee’s insistence that the report be truthful and not unnecessarily obscure the facts.

Nobel Laureates Stop A Future Of Robotic Warfare

May 14, 2014 Nobel Women's Initiative, www.nobelwomensinitiative.org Resist! Drones, Killer Robots, Nobel Prize

Referring to the development of weapons that could select targets and kill people without any human intervention as “unconscionable”, 20 individuals and organizations who have won the Nobel peace prize today issued a joint statement endorsing the call for a preemptive ban on these fully autonomous weapons. The signatories—which include Jody Williams (1997), Lech Walesa (1983), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984), President F.W. de Klerk (1993), President Oscar Arias Sánchez (1987), Shirin Ebadi (2003) and Tawakkol Karman (2011)—warn that robotic machines are “already taking the place of soldiers on the battlefield.” In their statement, the Nobel laureates note the concern that “leaving the killing to machines might make going to war easier and shift the burden of armed conflict onto civilians.” They also “applaud and support” the efforts of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to move us back from a “possible future of robotic warfare.” The Nobel peace laureates have released their statement on the eve of the first-ever multilateral talks on killer robots, taking place this week at the United Nations in Geneva. The Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) is hosting a meeting of experts Tuesday, May 13 to Friday, May 16.

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