Shaking Off

I meant to post this two weeks ago. But better late than never:

Although it’s unlikely it’ll ever gain the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize has become a more credible award. There’s a couple reasons for this. One has to do with the criteria. The Nobel Peace Prize is generally awarded for specific deeds, actions, events, etc. This is in contrast to all the other Nobel Prizes which are essentially lifetime achievement awards. So this means that a person who facilitates a major peace treaty will likely get the award even if he has a highly dubious track record. Henry Kissinger and Yasir Arafat are the two names most often brought up.

The Sakharov Prize on the other hand doesn’t tie itself to particular events. Take for example Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, winner of the 1996 prize. Wei’s big claim to fame is his 1978 essay “The Fifth Modernization” that he posted on Beijing’s Democracy Wall. Wei hasn’t done anything as well publicized since then but he’s never relented in his fight to bring democracy to his country. That’s why he deserves the recognition the Nobel Committee hasn’t given him.

And then we get to the second, more troubling issue surrounding the Nobel Peace Prize. Recently there has been a phenomenon that I like to call “Nobel activism” in which awards are given based not just on the merits of the recipient but also to send a message and influence future events. In the last decade the prize has been awarded to three influential members of the United States Democratic Party: Jimmy Carter in 2002, Al Gore in 2007 and now Barack Obama in 2009. It’s really hard to read this as anything other than a “fuck you” to George W. Bush. And there are much better / less sacred avenues to send that message.

The European Parliament’s award doesn’t get caught up with celebrity recipients. This year’s winner is Memorial (Мемориал), a Russian-based organization that fights for human rights and press freedom in the former Soviet Union. That the Sakharov Prize should go to Memorial is both fitting and troubling. Fitting because Andrei Sakharov himself helped found the organization in 1988. Troubling because while Memorial was formed to fight for democracy in the USSR, nearly two decades after its dissolution, the organization is still as busy as ever.

Wei Jingsheng’s “The Fifth Modernization”
Sakharov Prize at the European Parliament’s official website
RFE/RL article on prize-winner Memorial
Memorial official website