Nobel Peace Prize 2021 awarded to Maria Ressa, Dmitry Muratov
Stockholm: The Nobel Peace Prize 2021 was awarded to the Philippines’ Maria Ressa and Russia’s Dmitry Muratov for their efforts ‘to safeguard freedom of expression’ in their own countries.
While announcing the world’s most prestigious award, chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said that Ressa and Muratov were honoured “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”.
“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. Ressa in 2012 co-founded Rappler, a news website that has focused critical attention on the (President Rodrigo) Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign,” the Nobel committee said.
“Novaya Gazeta is the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power,” the Nobel committee said, adding that “the newspaper’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society rarely mentioned by other media.”
Earlier, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian.
The Nobel Prize 2021 for chemistry went to Benjamin List and David WC MacMillan for developing an ingenious tool that revolutionised the construction of molecules.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries in climate, complex physical systems to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi.
The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Tanzania-born UK-based post-colonialist novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah for “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.
The Nobel Prize for outstanding work in the field of economics will be announced on October 11.