Strasbourg: Three Russian rights defenders landed the European Parliament`s Sakharov Prize on Thursday, but one cited mixed feelings, saying all a murdered fellow-activist got was "a bullet”.
The 2009 award of the prestigious prize went to Oleg Orlov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Sergei Kovalev and "all the other human rights defenders in Russia”.
The award was given in the name of Natalya Estemirova, an activist for the rights group Memorial, who was shot dead in July after being kidnapped in Chechnya.
"Those people who defend human rights must be free to express themselves," said European Parliament head Jerzy Buzek, 20 years after the death of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and founder of Memorial in 1989.
Buzek added that European Union lawmakers "think that we can contribute towards the elimination of fear of violence and other forms of persecution endured by rights activists."
Estemirova 50, a vocal critic of human rights abuses in the Russian southern Caucasus republic of Chechnya, was found shot dead in neighbouring Ingushetia hours after being kidnapped.
"We receive a prize today but Natasha got a bullet," said Memorial president Orlov in a statement.
Bureau Report
