Nobel Peace Prize for Memorial

For the second time MEPs time have started to collect the signatures under the proposal of nomination of Russia-based association Memorial for the Nobel Peace Prize. A press conference summing up the action will take place on Wednesday at 9:30 am. The event coordinators on behalf of the Polish delegation of the EPP Group are MEPs Krzysztof Lisek and Roza Thun.

“It is a cross-party campaign. The nomination was signed by more than 100 MEPs, even though formally we only need one signature to submit the candidacy. We have signatures of the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, of the co-president of the Greens/EFA Group Daniel Cohn-Bendit and of the head of the EP foreign affairs committee Elmar Brok”, said Krzysztof Lisek.

“In spite of the difficulties and threats that they are facing, Memorial activists are fulfilling their mission firmly and effectively. They connect people from different backgrounds, nations and generations around the idea of peace, freedom and human dignity regardless of the price that they have to pay. Memorial and its activists have for decades been have reminded us about what we do not want to remember, have warned us about what we do not like to think of, and  have been the conscience for us all who do not respond to the humiliation of another human being”, said Roza Thun.

Memorial conducts research, describes and documents the cases of political persecution that took place in the USSR under the communist rule. The association created an international network which tries to restore the memory and the dignity of tens of thousands of victims of political repression.

The nomination of Memorial must be submitted to the Nobel Committee by the end of January 2014.