By Maria Millers
It is clear that over the years the Nobel Peace prize has become purely a political exercise drawing criticism from many quarters.
This has been happening for quite some time.
To give but a sample of egregious examples: Henry Kissinger was awarded the prize in 1973 for negotiating ceasefire in the Vietnam War while at the same time carpet bombing Cambodia. It should be noted that North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, also nominated, refused to accept the Prize, and for the first time in the history of the Peace Prize two members left the Nobel Committee in protest.
The 1991 recipient Ang San Sui Kyi has abandoned her saintliness and has gone on to overlook human rights abuses against the Rohynga Muslims in Myanmar.
But it truly turned into farce when Barak Obama, in power for less than eight months was awarded the prize in 2009. Obama may have slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones, but he; “vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.” And “He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.”
And it is ironic that an Age editorial last week welcomed the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa, chief executive of Rappler in the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta in Russia as an “affirmation of the important part that free and vibrant journalism plays in the preservation of democracy” and warned about the threats to free speech and fact based journalism.
Few would argue with this assertion, but the irony is that at the same time this paper and other mainstream media have done little to prosecute the same argument in the case of Julian Assange or to condemn the disgraceful failure of our government to support him. Assange’s exposure of US war crimes has left him still facing extradition and on October 27th the US will once again appeal against the British court’s decision to not extradite Assange on health grounds, and once again he faces life imprisonment or possibly worse. And we must not forget that Assange’s crime was to expose US war crimes for all to see – in other words, “free and vibrant journalism” that The Age so lauded in its editorial.
However, the difference between Assange and this year’s recipients is that they did not challenge US power, in fact have connections to US interests. Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta is backed by a section of Russia’s wealthy who seek a more direct relationship with the US. Maria Ressa’s publication Rappler received substantial funding from a US organization for promoting democracy in what seems like an attempt to counteract Duterte’s pivot to China and away from the US.
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