2007 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk

Akifa Aliyeva, Gégé Katana, Jackeline Rojas, Radhia Nasraoui, Riza Fanilag

Front Line is pleased to announce the short list of nominees for the 2007 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. Bono will present the award on 01 May 2007 at a breakfast ceremony in Dublin’s City Hall.

The annual award honours a Human Rights Defender who, through their non-violent work, has made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and protection of Human Rights in the face of considerable personal risk. The aim of the award is to focus international attention on the human rights defenders work and the cash prize to support both the human rights defenders and his or her organisation.

Akifa Aliyeva

Akifa Aliyeva works with a branch of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, an organisation that promotes and protects women’s, youth and environmental rights in Azerbaijan. She has been the target of numerous death threats and labeled ‘an enemy of the state’ due to her vocal criticism of the authorities. The authorities have extended their persecution to Akifa Aliyeva’s family. Her house is under constant surveillance and her movements monitored. The organization itself has been attacked several times and the authorities have repeatedly tried to close it down. Azerbaijan has a long history of politically motivated arrests and uses a variety of tactics to silence critics or those perceived as threatening government authority. Torture remains widespread. Media freedoms have also deteriorated significantly over recent years.

Gégé Katana

Gégé Katana is the president of the Solidarity Movement of Women Human Rights Activists (SOFAD), based in Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). SOFAD works through a grassroots network of 625 women to research and campaigns against sexual violence. SOPAD also educates local communities on women and children’s rights, and lobbies the government to deliver justice and reform discriminatory laws. Gégé Katana has been subjected to persecution for many years. Her movements are routinely under surveillance and she was completely banned from traveling between 1996 and 2003. She has been arbitrarily arrested on several occasions and her children have also been harrassed. In 2004, armed men completely stripped her house of all her belongings. She has received death threats from the Congolese army and from different armed factions, including the Mai-Mai.

Jackeline Rojas

Jackeline Rojas is the coordinator and legal representative for the Organisation Femenina Popular (OPF) in South Bolivar, Colombia. OPF supports political activists in the development of the social fabric in the Magdalena Medio region. Women suffer most from the humanitarian crisis and state terror in the region. Human rights defenders are the objects of constant surveillance in Colombia. The OFP has documented 135 separate incidents of harassment against its members. Since 2001, Jackeline Rojas has been the victim of death threats, intimidation, surveillance and judicial harassment. She survived an attempt on her life by paramilitaries in 2004. On 3 December 2003, her brother and political activist, Jose de Jesus Rojas Castaneda, was killed by paramilitaries. The latest death threat she received was as recent as 21 June 2006.

Radhia Nasraoui

Radhia Nasraoui is a high profile human rights defender and human rights lawyer from Tunisia. She defends political prisoners, victims of state repression. She is the founding member of the Association Against Torture in Tunisia (ALTT) and the first female lawyer in Tunisia to be a member of the Law Council. She is a member of the assembly of delegates of the World Organisation against Torture and has undertaken a number of observer missions, with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FIDH and with European Union delegations. For more than 25 years, Radhia Nasraoui has been the target of police harassment, threats and attacks on her workplace. She has also been issued decrees that restrict her movement. Her family and clients have also been subjected to harassment. Police have broken into her office on three separate instances. She has been physically attacked on a number of occasions. Her emails are intercepted and her telephone calls are monitored. There has been sporadic police presence in front of her home. In 2002, her husband and political activist, Hamma Hammami was arrested, and sentenced to three years detention for his political opinions.

Riza Fanilag

Riza Fanilag works with the National Federation of Peasant Women (AMIHAN) in Mindanao, the Philippines. AMIHAN works to support rural peasants and campaigns against income and land inequalities in the Philippines. Reportedly, since 2001, 319 human rights defenders have been killed by suspected military or police personnel. Riza Fanilag is temporarily based in the city of Manila on account of the high risks she faces in her home province. Two members of AMIHAN have already been killed due to their work on behalf of AMIHAN. In March 2005, 11 military men kicked down the door of a meeting attended by Riza Fanilag and 10 other human rights defenders. One of the attendees was abducted and later tortured and sexually abused. Since 2003, Riza Fanilag has been on a watch list of persons tagged by the military. Persons on this list are frequently subjected to arrests, enforced disappearances or worst, summary execution.