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homo homini
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Homo Homini Award
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The People in Need Foundation presents the annual Homo Homini
Award to persons with outstanding merits in promoting human rights, democracy,
and the non-violent resolution of political conflicts. Last year’s award
went to Zackie Achmat of South Africa, whose great personal commitment helped
launch a campaign to reduce the prices of AIDS drugs in Third World countries.
In preceding years the prize has been awarded to, for example, the then-chairman
of the Democratic League of Kosovo and now president of Kosovo, Ibrahim
Rugova for his non-violent opposition to the Yugoslav regime; Cuban Christian
dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardinas; and Russian State Duma deputy Sergey Kovalyov,
for his work raising public opinion against the war in Chechnya.
The Board of Directors of the People in Need Foundation has decided to present
the Homo Homini Award for 2002 to distinguished defenders of human rights
and democratic and religious freedoms in Vietnam. They receive the award
for their personal courage in their peaceful resistance to the Vietnamese
Communist regime for the past thirty years. By this decision, the People
in Need Foundation also wishes to express its respect and support to all
representatives of the democratic opposition in Vietnam who have been striving
for a non-violent transition to democracy in their country.
The Homo Homini Award for the year 2002 is presented to: |
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Thich Huyen Quang (Le Dinh Nhan
by civil name) is a patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
He has repeatedly appealed to the authorities in Vietnam to introduce democratic
reforms, permit the activity of political parties, and declare free elections.
For his peaceful activism he has been detained and jailed many times. He
has spent altogether more than twenty years in custody, mainly under house
arrest. Although he was formally released in 1997, he is still guarded by
the police, restrained in his movements, and denied healthcare, despite
his serious health problems and advanced age of 86 years. In 1982, Thich
Huyen Quang was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. |
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Thich Quang Do (Dang Phuc Tue by civil
name) is a Buddhist monk, scholar and writer, and one of the leaders of
the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. He was born in 1928 and entered
a monastery at the age of fourteen. At 17 he witnessed the execution of
his spiritual mentor by a People’s Revolutionary Tribunal. Deeply affected
by this experience, he decided to dedicate his life to strive for justice
and to spread the Buddhist message of peace, compassion, and tolerance.
For his active promotion of religious freedom, human rights, and democracy,
the Vietnamese Communist regime jailed him for many years and held him at
re-education camps. His most recent internment was a two-year prison sentence
in 2001 for declaring the "Appeal for Democracy in Vietnam." He
lives in isolation without medical assistance, under police surveillance.
Thich Quang Do has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and this
year he is again among the candidates.
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Nguyen Van Ly is a Roman Catholic
priest. He was born in 1946. He has been repeatedly subjected to brutal
treatment by the authorities for defending religious freedom in Vietnam.
He was detained for the first time in 1977 for circulating an Episcopal
Church letter criticizing the imprisonment of Buddhist monks and religious
intolerance in Vietnam. It took two hundred policemen to arrest him in 1983,
because both Catholic and Buddhist believers gathered in his church and
rose in his defense. Nguyen Van Ly was then sentenced to ten years in jail.
In 2001 he was sentenced again as a prisoner of conscience to fifteen years
in jail. His condition is very serious.
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As the winners are unable to attend the award ceremony, the
awards will be accepted in their name by Vo Van Ai, a distinguished
Vietnamese political activist, journalist, historian, and poet living in
exile in Paris. Vo Van Ai was born in 1938. He has lived his life in opposition
to the different governments and regimes that took their turn in Vietnam.
He was arrested for the first time at the age of eleven for participating
in the resistance movement against the colonial government and for the independence
of Vietnam. He is the founder and president of the Vietnamese Committee
for Human Rights and the spokesperson in exile of the Unified Buddhist Church
of Vietnam. He helped initiate a campaign that led to the launch of L’Ile
de Lumiére in 1978, the first rescue ship dedicated to helping the boat
people – those escaping from Communist dictatorships in ramshackle vessels.
Vo Van Ai speaks out about the necessity to globalize democracy. This task
requires "education and access to information for people who do not
know about their basic rights." |
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