The Sakharov Prize for Geert Wilders?

A member of the European Parliament for the PVV has nominated his party’s leader for the Sakharov Prize, which is awarded by the EP to people who fight for freedom of expression. Geert Wilders has no chance of actually winning it, but one can dream…

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a report from De Telegraaf:

PVV wants freedom award for Geert Wilders

Geert WildersSTRASBOURG — MEP Barry Madlener (PVV) has nominated his party leader Geert Wilders for the Sakharov Prize, a prize given by the European Parliament to people who stand for freedom of expression.

“It’s a shame that someone in a European country is being prosecuted because he defends a fundamental right to freedom of expression,” Madlener said, referring to the trial against Wilders for, among other things, his controversial anti-Islam film Fitna.

Madlener is currently busy collecting the required forty signatures for the nomination among the 736 MEPs. Fraction leaders will later make a choice from the nominations.

The Sakharov Prize was previously awarded to Nelson Mandela, the Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Belarus opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich.

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The PVV’s action has led to fierce criticism. Dutch D66 [center-left liberals, anti-Wilders party] MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld finds the attempt to nominate Wilders to be insulting for people who live in real dictatorships. “I do not think you can compare people like Mandela and Chinese human rights activists who are languishing in a prison cell with Wilders,” said In ‘t Veld. “I think this action reveals that the Party for Freedom has lost sight of reality.”

Also the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA, Socialists) leader Thijs Berman responded sharply to the action.

The Sakharov Prize also includes an award of €50,000. There are many nominations for the prize every year. The chance that the fraction leaders in the European Parliament will actually choose Wilders is minimal.

4 thoughts on “The Sakharov Prize for Geert Wilders?

  1. The Sakharov Prize

    One is obliged to wonder if Wilders’ persecuters will ever obtain a scintilla of irony from the fact that they would like nothing better than to throw Geert into a gulag, if their porous security does not admit the odd murderous Muslim first.

    Europe’s Vampire Elite™ seem entirely uncontaminated by even the vaguest sense of history. Evidently, they roam an elysian domain of their own making and therein manage to remain blissfully free from the ravages of intelligence.

  2. May I suggest this as a ”sense of history”

    The Nobel Prize in Peace 2009 was awarded to Barack H. Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

    regards to Zenster

    SF

  3. British National Party leader and MEP Nick Griffin announced this morning in the European Parliament that he wished to nominate brave Dutch MEP Geert Wilders for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

    The award, in honour of the Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honour individuals or organisations who had dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedoms.

    Mr Griffin nominated Mr Wilders for “his tireless commitment to freedom of speech and his continuous struggle against islamisation, mass-immigration and the leftish attacks on Western Humanist Judeo-Christian values that destroy Europe from within.

    “All of this notwithstanding the fact that the Dutch judiciary wants to prosecute him for his brave work,” Mr Griffin said.

    Referring to the current attempts to prosecute Mr Wilders in his native Holland, Mr Griffin quoted another MEP who said it was a disgrace that in a European country, a man is being prosecuted for defending such a fundamental right as the freedom of speech.

    “Geert Wilders, for many a symbol in the fight against those who want to constrain the freedom of speech, is now is being prosecuted by the Dutch judiciary.

    “While our society is changing because of the Islamisation and mass-immigration the Dutch judiciary decided to go after a democratically elected representative for the use of his right of free speech,” Mr Griffin continued.

    “The European Parliament should give a signal, by awarding Geert Wilders the Sakharov Prize 2010 that it will not tolerate such monstrous attacks on freedom of speech and the right for any citizen to defend the values that are the historical and undeniable cornerstones of the society they live in.

    “Geert Wilders does not give up, even though he is continuously under attack by those who still believe in the multicultural dream and anyone who believes that the barbaric Islam is a contribution to Western society.

    “His bravery to stand up and criticize Islam has resulted in him getting numerous dead threats and prosecution by the Dutch and the Jordan judiciary.

    “Geert Wilders has been refused entrance to Indonesia as well as to the Turkish Parliament. He also has to live under protection twenty-four hours a day.

    “If we will not stand up we will risk losing everything, our identity, our culture and our Democratic Constitutions. And after we have lost all of them, we will lose our freedom, a man who lost his freedom has lost everything,” Mr Griffin said.

  4. yuikn: May I suggest this as a “sense of history”

    Yup, BHO ranks right up there with good old Yasser Arafat for his winning of the peace prize.

    Two less deserving individuals are difficult to imagine. By comparison, the preposterous Carbon Credit fraud, Warble Gloaming snake oil flogger and Internet inventor, Al Gore, doesn’t even rate so much as a (dis)honorable mention.

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