Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel peace prize winner from 2010. But who will be awarded the prize this year? Photograph: Liu Xia/EPA
Last year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sparked a minor diplomatic
row when it awarded the prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; in 2009
it was no less provocative when it selected Barack Obama before the US
president had even completed a year in office.
In 2011, arguably
the most eventful year of the century so far, the committee has no
shortage of candidates. But will it opt for safe, deserving cases such
as a protagonist from the Arab spring, one of the perennial nominees
like Helmut Kohl, or something more mischievous like the leading actors
in the WikiLeaks revelations.
Read through the main contenders
below and then vote for who you think should win - or use the comment
thread below to tell us who else you think should be on the list.
Lina Ben Mhenni
Lina
Ben Mhenni was teaching English at the University of Tunis, blogging
and living with her parents when the revolutionary momentum began
steadily building up in the months before Zine El Abidine was ousted in
January this year.
Her blog, A Tunisian Girl, played a crucial role in the Tunisian revolution.
Ben
Mhenni had been chronicling her daily life and thoughts online since
2007, dodging the ubiquitous censors. But as the revolutionary mood
grew, her tone hardened.
Under her own name, she stubbornly
published witness accounts of brutality, despite being followed by the
secret police, having her home repeatedly ransacked, hard-drives stolen,
and state authorities hacking her emails and Facebook accounts, and
deleting material. The fact that she had undergone a kidney transplant
and fought serious illness did not limit her.
She played a key
role in the bloggers' anti-censorship demonstrations of May 2010,
rallies that sparked a government crackdown and led to two other
bloggers being arrested and briefly jailed.
Then in the winter of
2010, when the self-immolation of a vegetable-seller in Sidi Bouzid
sparked street protests and brought live-ammunition from police snipers,
she went to Tunisia's rural interior and posted videos and images of
the dead and wounded. She also visited hospitals and wrote accounts of
what she saw.
That type of material was not being published by
the heavily controlled state media, and it helped galvanise people in
Tunis and other cities, who then took to the streets.
Ben Mhenni,
who has published a short book, A Tunisian Girl, about her involvement
in the revolution describes herself as a "free electron". She is not a
member of any party and resigned from the interim government's panel
established to reform media, information and communication law, calling
the set-up just window-dressing and that she was not being listened to.
Ben
Mhenni learned of her Nobel peace prize nomination on Twitter and was
shocked, but said that if she won she would dedicate the prize to "the
martyrs and the wounded throughout Tunisia".
Memorial
Memorial
has seen its members beaten and killed, but soldiers on in its uphill
battle to defend human rights in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
The
group was founded in the dying days of the Soviet Union, devoted to the
gruelling task of recording the political repressions, arrests and
murders carried out under the communist regime. To this day, its library
welcomes Russians hoping to discover the truth about relatives who have
long disappeared.
With branches across Russia and also in
Ukraine, Memorial's Human Rights Centre focuses on fighting the human
rights violations that have returned to the Russian landscape.
Russia's
main problem, says Memorial's chairman, Oleg Orlov, is "the desire to
not remember the tragic path the Soviet Union went down".
"We
always said 'never again' – and we meant this in terms of political
repressions. But now again we see political prisoners in Russia. We're
slowly returning to our Soviet past."
Memorial helps organise
legal aid for victims of human rights violations and works to publicise
cases that find no place in Russia's largely state-controlled media.
It
has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize alongside co-founder
Svetlana Gannushkina, a 69-year-old firebrand who leads Russian attempts
to battle the growing xenophobia afflicting the country. In addition to
sitting on Memorial's board, Gannushkina heads the Committee for Civil
Assistance, an NGO devoted to migrants' rights.
"The situation is
getting worse," Gannushkina said. "It's thrown me into horror.
Nationalism has been put forward as 'an opiate for the people' and it
will lead to the break-up of Russia."
On a recent afternoon,
Gannushkina's office was packed with migrants – men and women from
ex-Soviet countries seeking to find a better life, and work, in Russia.
Instead they are often met with police brutality, social violence and
exclusion.
"I've always been that way – I can't stay out of other
people's business," Gannushkina said, explaining why a trained
mathematician would become one of Russia's leading human rights
activists. "It's our duty to challenge this system," Gannushkina said,
referring to Russia under Putin. "They want democracy only for
themselves – but it doesn't work that way."
Julian Assange
Julian
Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, is an outside bet for this
year's Nobel peace prize, though, to some, he is a figure of some
controversy.
Assange's whistleblowing website was behind the
release of three of the biggest leaks in history: secret communiqués
from US diplomats, military logs from Iraq, and war files from
Afghanistan.
His supporters say he is a fearless champion of human
rights and free speech; his detractors reckon him self-important, a man
whose reckless disclosures endangered lives.
Assange has scooped
several big prizes already. These include the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize
for Journalism, as well as an award from Amnesty International. He is
already on the Nobel prize shortlist after Snorre Valen, a young
Norwegian politician, nominated him in February.
WikiLeaks is
also credited with playing a role in the Arab spring – the site's leaked
US diplomatic cables painting a vivid portrait of corruption and
decadence among the now-deposed plutocrats of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
But
the White House is likely to protest vigorously if Assange gets the
prize. The US administration accuses the 40-year-old of spoiling
relations with international partners, and it has been seeking a way,
unsuccessfully so far, to prosecute him for treason.
It might
also be tricky for Assange to collect the prize in person. He is living
under curfew in Norfolk, appealing against extradition to Sweden, where
he faces sexual assault allegations. Depending on how the legal process
goes over the next couple of months he could either be in England or,
if extradited and convicted, inside a Swedish prison cell.
Assange
does have a broad and unusual coalition of backers. They include
anti-war activists, information libertarians, and the Kremlin. In
December, a member of Dmitry Medvedev's entourage proposed that the
Australian activist and publisher be given the Nobel gong, a suggestion
made seemingly to annoy Washington. Assange's recently published and
disavowed autobiography makes a reference to the Nobel peace prize on
the author's blurb. He might just pull it off.
Helmut Kohl
A
Nobel peace prize nomination list would not be complete without the
hulking form of the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The Nobel
committee keeps nominations a secret for 50 years, but according to Der
Spiegel, the 81-year-old colossus has received a nod every single year
since 1990. That, of course, was when he achieved his greatest feat, of
fusing two Germanys back into one – and defying Margaret Thatcher in the
process.
The Iron Lady was fiercely opposed to reunification and
made no secret of the fact. In his memoirs, Kohl recalled how Thatcher
once grumbled: "We beat the Germans twice, and now they're back." Tough
cheese, thought the truculent Kohl, and pushed hard for his motherland
to be brought back together. On 3 October 1990, his mission was
accomplished.
It was not an easy feat. Erich Honecker, who
masterminded the construction of the Wall, and who later led the German
Democtatic Republic, always claimed his creation would stand for 100
years – German citizens on both sides of the border believed him.
But
even when the Wall fell in November 1989, reunification was not a
foregone conclusion. The two Germanys used different currencies, one
vastly richer than the other. Then there were the cultural and
ideological differences forged through five decades of forced
separation.
Twenty-one years on from the fall of the Wall, German
reunification is largely considered a success. Germany is easily the
richest and most powerful country in Europe and is a major player on the
world stage. But will Kohl get the gong?
Surely the committee
would have given him the prize in the 90s if they felt he deserved it?
On the other hand, Kohl is a sick man. Confined to a wheelchair, he can
no longer speak properly. With prizes only awarded to the living, this
year could be his last chance.
Israa Abdel-Fattah
Israa
Abdel-Fattah, also known as "Facebook Girl", worked in the HR department
of a private Cairo firm when she helped to found the 6 April Youth
Movement in 2008. The movement became a driving force during the street
protests of the Egyptian revolution in 2011.
Abdel-Fattah was a
young volunteer for el-Ghad party when she and two other young web
activists decided to start a Facebook page inviting young people to join
a strike movement organised for 6 April 2008 to support workers in
El-Mahalla El-Kurba, an industrial town north of Cairo.
The
Facebook group, backing the strike against inflation, corruption and
police brutality, quickly gained tens of thousands of supporters and
Abdel-Fattah came to the attention of the police. On the morning of the 6
April strike, she was arrested at a cafe near her office and held in
prison for two weeks. Her arrest shocked the international community of
cyber activists and became a rallying cause against censorship and
repression.
On her release, Abdel-Fattah made a statement
renouncing political activism and seemed to disappear from the protest
scene. But in 2011, she returned to help co-ordinate the protests that
toppled President Mubarak and was briefly detained again in January.
In
Tahrir Square, she rallied young people pushing for democratic reform
and became a regular spokesman in the international media for the
protesters. During one protest in late January, she told the Guardian:
"We don't want life to go back to normal until Mubarak leaves."
Wael Ghonim
Wael
Ghonim was an Egyptian computer engineer and Google executive who
managed Middle East marketing from Dubai, where he lived with his wife
and children in a villa with a swimming pool, when he became the
unlikely and reluctant hero of the Egyptian revolution.
Ghonim,
who had a background in cyber activism, founded a Facebook page in July
2010 titled "We Are All Khaled Said", after a 28-year-old businessman
was beaten to death by police in Alexandria, sparking protests. The
page, run in his spare time, gained hundreds of thousands of followers
and become a rallying point for young protesters to coordinate and
organise the street demonstrations which eventually toppled Hosni
Mubarak.
In January 2011, when the people's uprising was
gathering force, Ghonim tricked Google into allowing him to return to
Egypt, citing personal reasons. He was arrested and disappeared for 12
days while he was held in jail. He said he was interrogated over the
"foreigners" said to be behind the protests, he was blindfolded and
threatened with torture but not hurt.
On his release, he gave an
emotional TV interview and when shown pictures of some of the 300 people
who had died while he was in prison, he wept and walked off the set
overwhelmed. He became a household name.
"I'm not a hero, I slept
for 12 days," he said. "The heroes, they're the ones who were in the
street, who took part in the demonstrations, sacrificed their lives,
were beaten, arrested and exposed to danger."
He argued: "I only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can't name."
He later addressed cheering crowds of protesters in Tahrir Square where he demanded the departure of the regime.
After
the TV interview, over 130,000 people joined a Facebook page titled "I
delegate Wael Ghonim to speak in the name of Egypt's revolutionaries".
Sima Samar
Sima
Samar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
(AIHRC), embodies the struggle for women's rights in Afghanistan at a
time when the limited gains made since the fall of the Taliban in 2001
are in doubt.
She was the first Hazara woman to qualify as a
doctor in Afghan history but fled the communist regime in 1984 with her
son after her husband was arrested. Across the border in Pakistan, she
set up a medical centre for other Afghan women refugees in 1989, which
she ran during more than a decade in exile.
After the fall of the
Taliban, she returned to Afghanistan and became minister for women's
affairs in Hamid Karzai's government. She received death threats for
questioning restrictive laws affecting women, opposing the use of the
burqa and the practice of purdah, and promoting education for girls. She
has focused on health, particularly on the impact on the bones of a
poor diet and a lack of sunlight for women in conservative families.
As
a result of her outspoken comments, one conservative group denounced
her as the "Salman Rushdie of Afghanistan" and she was ultimately forced
to resign.
As well as running the human rights commission, Samar serves as a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan.
Private Bradley Manning
The
US soldier, Private Bradley Manning, is accused of leaking more than
250,000 secret diplomatic cables to Julian Assange – as well as the
haunting video of a US Apache helicopter executing civilians in Baghdad.
Of all the protagonists in the WikiLeaks melodrama, it is
Manning who has paid the highest personal price. He has spent the past
year and four months in custody, most of it in solitary confinement.
US
military investigators swooped in May 2010 after Manning allegedly
confessed to downloading classified data from a facility in Iraq. But in
the eyes of many he is a hero. His motives for allegedly leaking were
clearly selfless and idealistic.
"It's important that it gets out
... I feel, for some bizarre reason...it might actually change
something," Manning apparently confessed to fellow hacker Adrian Lamo.
In
detention, US authorities sought to humiliate Manning, stripping him of
his clothes, and prompting Amnesty International to raise its concerns.
Hardly
surprising then that the Welsh-born Manning has been nominated for this
year's Nobel peace prize. Like Assange, though, he would have a few
problems travelling to Oslo to collect it. He is currently detained,
awaiting court martial, in a medium-security prison in Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas.
The White House would undoubtedly react furiously were
the Nobel committee to give Manning, now 23, the prize – a bold gesture
to whistleblowers everywhere. The award would also make it harder for a
US military court to hand Manning a punitive jail term. He would begin
to look like a political prisoner.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung
San Suu Kyi has already won the Nobel peace prize, 20 years ago. Then,
however, the Burmese political activist was under house arrest in
Rangoon and unable to attend the award ceremony in Oslo. Now, with rapid
political changes in Burma, is it possible that one of the most famous
pro-democracy campaigners might pick up a second award, this time in
person?
No individual has ever won the award twice, but two
organisations - the red cross and the UNHCR - have been awarded the
peace prize more than once.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of
General Aung San, one of the principal leaders of Burma's struggle for
independence who was assassinated by political rivals in 1947 when she
was a toddler. Educated in Delhi and Oxford, she has been a political
activist since returning to her native land to look after her sick
mother in 1988, a year of massive political upheavals.
Aung San
Suu Kyi, charismatic, determined and striking, led mass demonstrations
calling for democracy. She could not, she said, stand aside and watch.
But the military junta brutally repressed all opposition. Despite the
crackdown and their leader's house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the
National League for Democracy, won elections in 1990. The poll was,
however, cancelled by the military rulers.
The Nobel prize
rewarded "her unflagging efforts" and aimed to show "support for the
many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy,
human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means".
Internationally
famous, Aung San Suu Kyi was to remain confined to her home for 15 of
the following 20 years. Last November, days after the party backed by
the military authorities had won the first elections for two decades,
Aung San Suu Kyi was released. Sidelined from the polls themselves, Aung
San Suu Kyi has since maintained a sceptical stance, urging the
international community to watch the small signs of reform in Burma
closely for any sign of backsliding.
News by
The Guardian
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