Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been nominated for the 2013 Sakharov Prize, a prize awarded by the European Parliament to honour individuals or organisations who have dedicated their lives to human rights and the freedom of thought.

Khodorkovsky was proposed by German MEP Werner Schulz, a leading member of the Greens/European Free Alliance group.  Mr Schulz, who is also the group’s foreign affairs spokesperson and vice chair of the Parliamentary Cooperation Committee EU-Russia, said in his press release:

I am convinced that Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be a worthy recipient of the Sakharov Prize and a worthy successor to Sakharov as the conscience of Russia.

Khodorkovsky criticised the endemic corruption in Putin’s System, supported political opposition and civil society. Unlike other oligarchs, he was unwilling to accept the alternatives on offer: submission or flight abroad. For this, he ended up in jail thanks to two political show-trials reminiscent of the Stalin era.

Khodorkovsky did not see the bars and barbed wire as restricting and confining, though: like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, he viewed them as a broadening experience. He has become a leading social critic and advocate for change in his country, inspired by the deep patriotism that caused him to stay in Russia when he could easily have run away.

His peaceful resistance and patriotism have inspired many Russians to voice their opposition to the increasingly authoritarian and repressive Kremlin regime.

Putin is now having a third criminal case prepared against Khodorkovsky, to put him behind bars for good. The European Union has to demonstrate solidarity with Khodorkovsky showing that it will not tolerate further selective justice and political prosecution in Russia.
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Presentation of nominees in a joint meeting of AFET/DEVE/DROI: Monday 16 September 2013, 18:00 Brussels

Live web stream HERE

Vote on three finalists in a joint meeting of AFET/DEVE: Monday, 30 September, Brussels

Official justification to the nomination of Mikhail Khodorkovsky by Werner Schulz (English, German)