The Saudi blogger who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for “ridiculing Islamic religious figures” has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights.
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Raif Badawi, 31, was announced the victor Thursday with the European Parliament’s president calling for his release.
“I call on his Majesty King Salman to gracefully end my husband’s ordeal and to pardon him”, Haidar, who lives in Canada, where she was granted political asylum, was quoted as saying.
In his blog, Badawi openly discussed the tenets of human rights – think protecting pluralism and secularism – and his concern that Saudi Arabia was violating them. Saudi Arabia can lock up the man and they can lash him, but they will only strengthen amongst his countrymen the yearning for free speech and debate that he stands for. The first of 20 sessions to impose the 1,000 lashes was given in January when he was lashed 50 times.
Ensaf Haidar stated she has-been told by an “informed source” the punishment can be administered in jail.
Outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper had joined several other Western leaders in speaking out against Badawi’s treatment along with human rights groups, including Amnesty worldwide, who have called for his release.
He was arrested for insulting top clerics in Saudi Arabia a year ago.
He had been in prison for more than a year and his family feared he would also be flogged, although Saudi officials denied this would happen.
A Jeddah courtroom handed Badawi his sentence in 2012 after he criticised the Saudi clergy in a weblog and referred to as for modifications in the best way faith is practiced in Saudi Arabia. He pointed to a past statement in which the Saudi authorities stated that their judicial system was independent and that it was not the place of outsiders to criticize it.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded each year by the Parliament.
Badawi was selected from a shortlist by British poet, journalist and critic James Fenton, who in June was chosen as the 2015 PEN Pinter Prize victor.
Last year, Parliament awarded the prize to Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege for helping victims of gang rapes by soldiers.
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Badawi was one of three nominees for this year’s prize along with assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and the Venezuelan opposition movement Mesa de la Unidad Democratica.
