Ilham Tohti : 2019 Sakharov Prize laureate.
Date: 2019-11-21
Institutions: European Parliament
Subjects: European Parliament, cultural prize, freedom of opinion, fundamental rights, honour, political prisoner, protection of freedoms, right to justice

Ilham Tohti

2019 Sakharov Prize laureate

Ilham 
Tohti

Ilham Tohti is a renowned Uyghur 
human rights defender, economics 
professor and advocate of the rights 
of China’s Uyghur minority. For over 
two decades, he has worked tirelessly 
to foster dialogue and understanding 
between Uyghurs and other Chinese 
people. In September 2014 Tohti was 
sentenced to life in prison for his 
activism following a 2-day show trial. 
He remains a voice of moderation 
and reconciliation in spite of what he 
has suffered. 

Tohti is known for his research on 
Uyghur–Han relations and as a vocal 
advocate of the implementation of 
regional autonomy laws in China. He 
was also the host of Uyghur Online, a 
website that discusses Uyghur issues. 
Via this platform, Ilham Tohti regularly 
criticised the exclusion of China’s 
Uyghur population from Chinese 
development and encouraged greater 
awareness of the status and treatment 
of the Uyghur community in Chinese 
society. For these actions, he was 
declared a ‘separatist’ by the Chinese 
state and ultimately sentenced to life 
in prison.

For his work in the face of adversity, 
Tohti was awarded the 2014 PEN/
Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write 
Award, the 2016 Martin Ennals Award 
for Human Rights Defenders and the 
2017 Liberal International Prize for 
Freedom, and has been nominated for 
the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. 

The Uyghur people have been 
subjected to unparalleled repression 
by the Chinese government in recent 
years as a result of their unique ethnic 
identity and religious beliefs. Since April 
2017, over 1 million innocent Uyghurs 
have been arbitrarily detained in a 
network of internment camps, where 
they are forced to renounce their ethnic 
identity and religious beliefs and swear 
loyalty to the Chinese government. 

Ilham Tohti’s case touches on crucial 
international issues and human 
rights concerns: the fostering of 
moderate Islamic values in the face 
of state-directed religious repression; 
efforts to open channels of dialogue 
between a Muslim minority and a non-
Muslim majority population; and the 
suppression of non-violent dissent by 
an authoritarian state.

The Sakharov 
Prize

The European Parliament awards the 
Sakharov Prize, with its EUR 50 000 
endowment, at a formal plenary sitting 
in Strasbourg towards the end of each 
year. Each of the Parliament’s political 
groups may nominate candidates, as 
may individual MEPs (the support of 
at least 40 MEPs is required for each 
candidate). The nominees are presented 
at a joint meeting of the Foreign 
Affairs Committee, the Development 
Committee and the Human Rights 
Subcommittee, and the members of 
the full committees vote on a shortlist 
of three candidates. The final winner 
or winners of the Sakharov Prize are 
chosen by the Conference of Presidents, 
a European Parliament body led by the 
president, which includes the leaders 
of all the political groups represented 
in the Parliament, making the choice of 
laureates a truly European choice.

Awarded for the first time in 1988 to 
Nelson Mandela and Anatoli Marchenko, 
the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of 
Thought is the highest tribute paid by 
the European Union to human rights 
work. It gives recognition to individuals, 
groups and organisations that have 
made an outstanding contribution to 
protecting freedom of thought. Through 
the prize and its associated network the 
EU assists laureates, who are supported 
and empowered in their efforts to 
defend their causes.

The prize has so far been awarded to 
dissidents, political leaders, journalists, 
lawyers, civil-society activists, writers, 
mothers, wives, minority leaders, an 
anti-terrorist group, peace activists, 
an anti-torture activist, a cartoonist, 
long-serving prisoners of conscience, 
a film-maker, the UN as a body and 
even a child campaigning for the right 
to education. It promotes in particular 
freedom of expression, the rights of 
minorities, respect for international 
law, the development of democracy 
and the implementation of the rule 
of law. Several laureates, including 
Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Denis 
Mukwege and Nadia Murad, went on to 
win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Laureates

2018  Oleg Sentsov

2017  Democratic opposition in Venezuela

2016  Nadia Murad and Lamya Haji Bashar 

2015  Raif Badawi

2014  Denis Mukwege

2013  Malala Yousafzai

2012  Nasrin Sotoudeh and Jafar Panahi

2011  Arab Spring (Mohamed Bouazizi, 
Ali Ferzat, Asmaa Mahfouz, 
Ahmed El Senussi and 
Razan Zaitouneh)

2010  Guillermo Fariñas

2009  Memorial (Oleg Orlov, Sergei 

Kovalev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva,  
on behalf of Memorial and all other  
human rights defenders in Russia)

2008  Hu Jia

2007  Salih Mahmoud Mohamed Osman

2006  Aliaksandr Milinkevitch

2005  Ladies in white, Hauwa Ibrahim, 
Reporters Without Borders

2004  Belarussian Association 
of Journalists

2003  United Nations  

Secretary-General Kofi Annan  
and all the staff of the UN

2002  Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
Izzat Ghazzawi, Nurit  
2001 
Peled-Elhanan, Dom Zacarias 
Kamwenho
2000 
¡Basta Ya!
1999  Xanana Gusmão
Ibrahim Rugova
1998 
1997  Salima Ghezali
1996  Wei Jingsheng
1995  Leyla Zana
1994  Taslima Nasreen
1993  Oslobođenje
1992  Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo
1991  Adem Demaçi
1990  Aung San Suu Kyi
1989  Alexander Dubček
1988  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela  

and Anatoli Marchenko  
(posthumously)

How are the laureates 
chosen?

July

 ►

Call for nominations

September

October

October

Minimum 40 MEPs or one political group

 ►

AFET

Assess nominations
DROI

DEVE

Foreign Affairs 
Committee

Subcommittee 
on Human Rights

Development 
Committee

 ►

Shortlist

Three finalists voted by the AFET and DEVE committees

 ►

Laureate

Selected by the Conference of Presidents

December

 ►

Award ceremony

Plenary session in Strasbourg

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Andrei 
Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was a 
renowned physicist, human rights 
activist, dissident and advocate of 
reform in the USSR. A pioneer in nuclear 
physics and the father of the Soviet 
hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov was 
32 years old when he became a full 
member of the Academy of Sciences of 
the Soviet Union. However, by the late 
1950s, he was becoming increasingly 
concerned about the consequences 
of nuclear testing and the political 
and moral implications of his work, 
which could lead to the deaths of huge 
numbers of people. In the 1960s he 
became a critic of the nuclear arms race, 
and as a result was banned from all top-
secret military work and stripped of his 
privileges.

In 1970 he became one of the 
co-founders of the Committee on 
Human Rights in the USSR, and started 
campaigning for human rights and the 
victims of political trials. In 1972 he 
married fellow human rights activist 
Yelena Bonner. Despite increasing 
pressure from the government, 
Sakharov not only sought the release 
of dissidents in his country but also 
became one of the Soviet regime’s 

most courageous critics, embodying 
the crusade against the denial of 
fundamental rights. In the words of 
the Nobel committee, which awarded 
him the Peace Prize in 1975, he was 
‘a spokesman for the conscience of 
mankind’. He was not allowed to receive 
his Nobel Prize in person, but neither 
repression nor exile could break his 
resistance.

Andrei Sakharov was exiled to the 
closed city of Gorky in 1980, after 
he publicly protested against the 
1979 Soviet military intervention in 
Afghanistan. While in exile, he lived 
under tight police surveillance. In 
recognition of Sakharov’s lifelong 
commitment to human rights, in 1988 
the European Parliament established 
a prize named after him. In the words 
of Jean-Francois Deniau, who led the 
initiative, Sakharov was a European 
citizen who was the personification of 
freedom of thought and expression 
and who had decided, because of his 
convictions and his conscience, to 
renounce all the material advantages 
and all the honours which were open 
to him. 

The European Parliament 
supports human rights

considered universal, the response is 
the same whether the violation takes 
place in Myanmar/Burma, some 8 000 
kilometres away, or in Belarus, which 
borders the EU.

Supporting democracy around the 
globe
Sustaining democracy is a key element 
of this effort, spelled out in the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 
‘The will of the people shall be the basis 
of the authority of government’. MEPs 
defend democratic systems around 
the globe. Some have travelled far to 
observe elections, mediate in conflicts 
and support fledgling parliaments.

Democracy and human rights
The European Parliament has earned 
a reputation as a dedicated supporter 
of people’s basic rights and of 
democracy. Within this, the EU’s only 
directly elected institution, the 
Members of the European Parliament 
(MEPs) fight against new and old attacks 
on essential liberties.

Protecting fundamental rights in 
the EU
Fundamental rights apply to all people 
in the EU, no matter their status or 
origin. Some of these freedoms are 
as old as Europe: life and liberty; free 
thought and expression. But others 
have had to be redefined to keep pace 
with the times. Protecting personal data 
or prohibiting human cloning were far 
from the minds of the first MEPs, elected 
some four decades ago.

Defending human rights beyond 
the EU
The European Parliament does not 
believe that people’s basic rights end at 
the EU’s borders. MEPs regularly speak 
out — individually and in unison — 
about human rights issues in non-EU 
countries. Because these rights are 

N

-

N
E
-
4
5
7
-
9
1
-
1
0
-
A
Q

7
3
0
4
2
7
/
1
6
8
2
0
1

.

:
i

o
d

7
-
7
9
5
5
-
6
4
8
-
2
9
-
8
7
9
N
B
S

I

s
e
g
a
m

I

P
A
/
g
n
o
W
y
d
n
A
©
o
t
o
h
p
r
e
v
o
C

i

m
u
g
e
B
n

l

i

t
o
l
t
e
B
e

i

i
r
e
m

i
r
p
m

I
y
b
d
e
t
n
i
r
P

Andrei Sakharov with his wife Yelena Bonner © Yury Rost

europarl.europa.eu/sakharov
#SakharovPrize

European Parliament