Malala up for Nobel Peace Prize
2013-02-01 16:00
Oslo - Malala Yousafzai, the shot Pakistani
schoolgirl-turned-icon of Taliban resistance, and ex-Eastern bloc activists are
among those known to be nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, as the deadline
expired on Friday.
This year's award will be announced in early October, but
speculation was already underway as the deadline for nominations ran out on 1 February.
Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by a Taliban
gunman at point blank range as she travelled on a bus to school on 9 October,
targeted for promoting girls' education.
She has since become an internationally recognised symbol
of opposition to the Taliban's drive to deny women education, and against
religious extremism in a country where women's rights are often flouted.
"A prize to Malala would not only be timely and
fitting with a line of awards to champions of human rights and democracy, but
also... would set both children and education on the peace and conflict
agenda," said the head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Kristian
Berg Harpviken.
Others known to have been nominated are human rights activists,
whose names have been mentioned in previous years, including Belarussian human
rights activist Ales Belyatski - currently behind bars - and Russia's Lyudmila
Alexeyeva.
Belarus, which former US President George W Bush's
administration qualified as the "the last dictatorship in Europe", is
governed by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has cracked down
even further on opponents of late, rights groups charge.
In neighbouring Russia, authorities "unleashed the
worst political crackdown in Russia's post-Soviet history," according to
Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Trying to predict who will win the Nobel Peace Prize is a
difficult task, complicated by the fact that the list of nominees each year is
kept secret for 50 years.
But thousands of people are eligible to nominate
candidates - including former laureates, members of parliament and government
around the world, some university professors, and members of certain
international organisations - and they are allowed to reveal the names they
have put forward.
As a result, it is known that French, Canadian and
Norwegian MPs have all separately nominated Malala.
Beliatsky's and Alexeyeva's names have, meanwhile, been
put forward by two Norwegian lawmakers.
"They have both defied authoritarian state
structures and the illegal and illegitimate abuse of power," one of the
two MPs, Jan Tore Sanner, said.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is quick to point out that
a nomination should not be interpreted as any kind of recognition on its
behalf.
In the past, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito
Mussolini, and even Michael Jackson have all been nominated.
- SAPA
