Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Ones Passed Over

Meet the heroes passed over for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

Dr Sima Samar, MD
"Now 50 years old, she graduated from a Kabul medical school in the middle of the Soviet invasion. She was forced to flee Kabul for a more central part of Afghanistan, where, though barely into her training she began attempting to treat patients against a background of extreme poverty, war, and harassment by the Taliban, who have virtually criminalised the delivery of reproductive health services to women and girls."
Denis Mukwege
"Mukwege has probably become the world’s leading expert on how to repair the internal physical damage caused by gang rape. He has treated 21,000 women during the Congo’s 12-year war, some of them more than once, performing up to 10 surgeries a day during his 18-hour working days."
Chinese activist Hu Jia
"...now doing a three year jail term for attempting to publicize the plight of the persecuted Falun Gong minority."
[---]
"True, the Nobel Prize was originally created to honour the person or organisation who has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” But in recent years it has often honored people like Mother Teresa or organisations like Medecins Sans Frontieres for human rights work. (And where was Al Gore supposed to fit in?)"
Good question, that last one.

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